


The Lines That Hold

by ThisBeautifulDrowning



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: #Team No Character Bashing, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Everyone Has Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Ignores Avengers: Endgame Time Travel Rules, M/M, Magical Realism, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Piercings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build, Stephen Strange Has Issues, Stephen is so done with the world, Tony Stark Has Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wong is so done with Stephen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-02-26 10:22:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisBeautifulDrowning/pseuds/ThisBeautifulDrowning
Summary: Wong stopped at a door at the end of a long hallway. “Be very quiet,” he whispered.“Why?”“Because they can hear.”As if this whole experience wasn’t already creepy enough. FRIDAY indicated there was a single beating heart behind the door, a single body with a power signature Tony was becoming way too familiar with. Fingers on the edge of the nano–compartment, he leaned in to Wong. “I have a stun beam at my disposal, and I’m not afraid to use it. If Strange comes shambling out of there going ‘wooo’...”---The Snap has been undone. Not everyone got their fairytale-happily-ever-after-ending.





	1. Prologue + One

**Author's Note:**

> REWRITE! Massive thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments on the previous incarnation of the story. The short chapters really weren't working for me, and going back and consolidating is a pain in the rear. Also, I wanted to swap a few things around. ( Pleasedon'thateme <3 )
> 
> Posting schedule: when I'm done with a chapter, I'll post it. 
> 
> Additional warnings: **Proceed with caution if you're squeamish about piercings.** This isn't "___finds out ___ has piercings and sexytimes ensue", this is "___finds out ___ has piercings and omg _why_ ". Also, **proceed with caution if you're squeamish about jellyfish** , I guess. I mention them. Like, a lot. **This story also deals with depression and related topics.**
> 
> Additional stuff: I get all my geographical info from Google and city maps. English isn't my native language. Please point out glaring errors. If you think I missed a tag, poke me.

**THE LINES THAT HOLD**

** **PROLOGUE** **

The mad Titan held out his hand. Stephen Strange plucked the Time Stone out of the air and let go. Bleeding, beaten, Tony managed only a strained, “Don’t!” He attempted to get up. He had to stop this. Had to. A cold numbness was spreading through him, turning his legs to lead, anchoring him to the rubble–strewn ground. He tried again, teeth grit, his focus narrowing down to a single point: stop this. He’d die here if he had to, he was ready, willing, he had to stop –

Tony dropped out of the wormhole, fired twenty–five nukes, dove down. He had to nail this. Had to. They had one shot at this. His focus narrowed down to a single point: the Time Stone. Clouds of thick, electrified smoke were billowing from the ground at Thanos’ feet. A diversion, nothing more. So simple that it simply had to work. “Strange!” Tony shouted, and yes, _yes_ –

Stephen’s open hand closed into a fist. The Time Stone disappeared from its trajectory.

Tony nailed the landing. When the smoke cleared, he stood between Thanos and the sorcerer. “Not this time, you megalomaniac grape.”

For a few seconds, Thanos looked confused. He took in the undamaged, different suit, Tony’s hair that had more grey in it, the absence of the great, gushing wound, the absence of the Time Stone. Realization dawned on his broad face. “I see. Clever, I’ll give you that.” There was a measure of respect in the tone of his voice. The Gauntlet lit up. “But this changes nothing.”

It changed _everything_. This time, Tony wasn’t alone. They came up behind Thanos: Steve, Carol, Nebula, Thor. This time, Thor aimed with sense more than a need to gloat. Stormbreaker rose and fell. The Gauntlet clattered to the ground, the gold–plated fingers twitching as nerves fired signals to a brain they were no longer connected to. Thanos roared in disbelief and pain. Carol’s punch sent him careening into Steve’s waiting shield, and Thanos teetered, jaw askew, knee shattered, clutching the stump of his arm.

Nebula dealt the killing blow, putting all her rage in it, her sword piercing Thanos’ left eye, going deep, deeper. Tony heard the crack of bone as the blade broke through the other side of the skull.

The ground trembled as the Titan fell. “Just making sure,” Thor announced, lifting Stormbreaker. With a single, sure stroke, he cut off the head.

No eulogies for the mad Titan. In silence, they stood and watched the last vestigial tremors, waiting for the massive body to still. They’d done it. They’d won. It was over.

“Congratulations.”

Tony turned to the source of the deep voice, not surprised by how not surprised Stephen was by the turn events had taken. He supposed he should feel thankful to the sorcerer – without him and his clever plan, they wouldn’t be here now.

All Tony felt was an overwhelming urge to punch that serene smile off the other man’s face. A year. A full year. Twelve months to the day, the hour, minute, and until the very last second there had been no guarantee that their ambush would work, only what–ifs and maybes and the shaky hope that a certain sorcerer had had one hell of a good reason to trade the Time Stone for Tony’s life.

Tony felt his hands curl into fists. “You –”

“Mister Stark! Mister Stark!”

Peter. Alive. Not dead, dust, gone. The heavy chains around Tony’s heart fell away.

Peter came swinging down from one of Titan’s broken spires, whooping with joy, dragging Quill, Mantis, and Drax behind him on long strands of web fluid. He hit the ground running and threw himself into Tony’s open arms, nearly barrelling him over. “We won! We – wait, where did you come from? I swear I saw you disappear.” Wide–eyed, Peter gaped at the three Tony had brought. “And where did _they_ come from?”

Quill had a hand on his energy gun as he walked up. Behind him, Drax and Mantis were taking up defensive positions, uncertainty plain on their faces. “What’s going on here?” Quill’s gaze fell on the corpse, his eyes going comically wide. “Is that –? That’s – _I_ wanted to do that!”

The plan they’d hatched to relieve Thanos of the Gauntlet had been _meant_ to fail, Tony knew that now, but he still held a grudge against Quill for losing his cool during the crucial moment. “Next time, maybe don’t go all blubbery.”

“Hey!” Quill shouted, instantly incensed. “Watch what you say, tin man.”

“Shut up,” Nebula interrupted coolly. “Thanos wasn’t yours to kill.”

“ _You_ shut up!” Quill snapped at her, and Nebula snarled, “Make me!” right back at him.

In the middle of the screaming match about girlfriends, sisters, Quill being a man–child, and Nebula being a cold–blooded bitch, Carol raised her eyebrows at Tony. “Are they always like this?”

Before he could tell her that he didn’t know and _really_ didn’t care, Steve lifted his shield and slammed the edge against the ground. The ear–shattering boom of noise startled Quill and Nebula into silence. “Listen up, people. We don’t have time for this, it’s not over yet.” Tony had to hand it to Steve, he knew how to get everyone to listen to him. “Thanos’ forces are on still Earth and we need to get back there, now. If they get to Vision –”

“They won’t.”

Tony had completely forgotten Stephen Strange. Now he turned around with the others, looking at the man who was still sitting on the ground, reclined against the rubble at his back. With a sudden feeling of unease, Tony noticed the ornate, worn gold pendant displayed prominently on the sorcerer’s chest, exactly the same as the one Thanos had crushed. Tony doubted Stephen had carried a spare one under one of his many belts, which meant that while people around him squabbled, Stephen had done his own thing. And no one had noticed. Just like before.

“That battle is over and won. Where we need to go is Vormir.” Stephen glanced at Thor. “And then to wherever it is your people are.”

Thor looked confused, the first emotion on his face in twelve months that wasn’t depressed anger or sorrow. “They are all dead, wizard.”

“Strange,” Steve said, impatience barely masked, “we don’t have time for side trips.”

The sorcerer’s smile was thin. “I have all the time in the world.”

– – –

Titan was too far away from Earth to establish a video link, Tony knew from previous – horrible – experience. He had to make do with hearing Pepper’s voice, thin and crackly over the long distance. “We’ll be just a little while longer, I promise. Crisis averted, world saved, bad guy gone.” Gone, beheaded, and then incinerated, the ashes mingling with Titan’s orange dust. Pepper didn’t need to know the grizzly details, or that Tony had collected a few samples before he had himself a Titan barbecue. “We’re just making a short stop on –”

“Vormir!” Quill skipped into the cockpit of the ship, brimming with excitement. “We’re going to Vormir. For Gamora. My girlfriend. To save her.” He leaned in over Tony’s shoulder, obnoxiously close. “Hi, whoever you are!”

“Go away.” Tony shoved him off. “Sorry about that, Pep.”

“I understand,” Pepper said. “It’s okay.”

Tony wondered if it was okay. If it ever would be okay.

Proving his worst fear wrong, Pepper hadn’t crumbled to dust like millions of others. When he returned to Earth, with Carol’s help, Nebula in tow, Pepper had been there, together with the few Avengers and allies who had survived the Decimation. In the dark months between then and now, they had grown closer than ever before, lent each other strength and hope. She’d been his harbour in the storm, and when they finally, finally came up with a plan that would work, she’d let him go without hesitation. Without her, Tony would never have made it through that year.

This was not the Pepper he’d left behind on Earth when they set out to kill Thanos. This was the Pepper he’d left behind in Central Park before he even knew who Thanos was. Talking to her felt surreal.

Quill was making impatient _get on with it_ gestures at him. Tony gave him the finger. “Honey, I’m sorry, but I have to go. Tight schedule. See you soon, okay? Love you.”

Pepper sounded brittle. “I love you, too.”

Tony retreated in search of the others, leaving the Guardians to their excited nattering and Nebula to pretending she wasn’t just as excited. He found Carol rolled up on a bench in the cluttered communal area between the cockpit and the personal quarters. Nearby, Peter had webbed himself a hammock in a corridor. Asking a million questions at a million miles an hour had exhausted him more than the fighting; he was taking a well–deserved nap.

Peter, alive. Tony still had trouble letting himself believe it was true.

Further back in the ship, he found Thor with his boots on an unassuming, oblong container holding the most dangerous item in the universe. Steve was picking through a bowl of star–shaped crunchy things, chewing grimly, which Tony suspected had nothing to do with the food. Steve had been looking grim since the moment Stephen mentioned Vormir.

Thor was oblivious to Steve’s end–of–the–world face, or he didn’t care. Bit of both, Tony guessed. “I still cannot believe it. My people. And Loki.” Thor grinned from ear to ear. “Is it weird that I’m looking forward to getting my brother back, knives and all?”

“Just a little, but hey, you do you.” Tony had given up trying to understand that complicated relationship years ago. “Did Strange say anything about the rest?”

‘The rest’, the others, the millions Thanos had killed before he snapped his fingers. The question had come up while they figured out time travel: why not go back further, prevent the entire chain of events? Carol had shut them down with a reminder about wormhole stability; her powers were incredible, but she was not almighty. There were limits to how far back she could take them through the Quantum Realm.

They had not talked about the Gauntlet. Not even once. They’d seen the damage it could do, lived in the damage. Tony didn’t even want to touch the thing.

Thor’s smile dulled. “The wizard advised against bringing back more.”

“Did he say why?”

“Only that it would be too dangerous.”

Steve pushed the bowl away. “And I agree. He’s going to play god.”

The opening was too perfect. “Is that true concern I’m hearing, or your offended Christian sensibilities?”

“This has nothing to do with my personal beliefs, and you know it.” Steve scowled. “Strange is going to _raise the dead_. If it ever gets out how...”

Then people would be falling over themselves to get their hands on the Time Stone, and not just on Earth. Everywhere. Tony knew exactly what Steve was getting at. They were being incredibly selfish, turning back time on one guy’s girlfriend and a bunch of Asgardians, but no one else. In Tony’s opinion, they had earned the right to be selfish, but he couldn’t deny that this had the potential to go catastrophically wrong. He had zero interest in mobs of angry aliens descending on his planet and demanding _their_ loved ones be brought back, too.

And maybe not just loved ones. Tony shuddered to think of Thanos, returned, and almost wished Stephen had never opened his mouth, but it was too late now to turn the ship around, literally _and_ figuratively. Quill was positively manic about getting them to Vormir as quickly as possible. Tony could feel the strain of the _Benatar_ around him, vibrating under the soles of his feet. No telling what Quill would do if they told him he wouldn’t be getting his girlfriend back, after all; no telling what _Thor_ would do. Or Nebula.

Tony felt a headache coming on. He was so ready for all of this to be over, _really_ over. He just wanted to grab Peter and go home. “Alright. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll talk to Peter and swear him to secrecy. Nebula and the Guardians?”

“I’ll do it,” Steve volunteered. “You or me, for Carol?”

“Don’t worry about Carol,” Carol said, walking into the conversation. She dragged a hand through her short hair, yawned, and eyed Steve’s abandoned crunchy–things–bowl with interest. “We just got rid of one crazy alien overlord with a hard–on for mass murder, I’m not going to help create another. My lips are sealed.”

That left Thor. The once and future King of Asgard nodded solemnly. “Asgard will keep this secret. You have my word.”

It needed to be asked. “And Loki?”

“He died for me, in the end.”

As if that explained anything. Maybe it did, and that relationship wasn’t so complicated, after all. Tony looked around. “Looks like we’re set. Where’d Strange go?”

Steve pointed at the archway leading to the ship’s private quarters. “He said something about needing to meditate.”

Tony had been waiting for a moment alone with the sorcerer for twelve months, and he was going to get it. “I’ll keep it short.”

– – –

Barren except for schools of microorganisms in stagnating pools of water, the planet was utterly silent. Even the wind crept around the craggy rock formations as if it was afraid to make noise. Halfway to the only detectable larger source of organic matter that wasn’t fossilized, they came across a tattered, floating black robe. Steve, without so much as a by–your–leave, beat seven kinds of hell out of it. “Old friend,” he puffed. “Don’t ask.”

Peter squinted at the pathetically groaning remains. “Isn’t that –”

Steve brought his shield down, and the groaning stopped. Tony recalled the moment when that had been him, lying on the ground with Steve looming, and shuddered. The newest scar on his chest, a thin, perfect line slashing through the older scars on his sternum, throbbed even though the wound was long mended.

They found Gamora sooner than expected. One minute they were picking their way across jagged, black stone, following a narrow path around the foot of a mountain, then they stood at the edge of smoother ground. Far, far above them loomed twin monolithic stone structures and the edge of a platform. Tony stopped Peter mid–step, just in time before he came around the last bend of the path. “Stay here. You don’t need to see this.”

Reluctantly, Peter hung back. “I’ll stay with him,” Mantis offered. “I don’t need to see it, either. This place...it screams.” Tony listened. She was right. The silence had teeth.

Gamora lay in a pool of green, drying blood amid scattered, ancient bones. Tony craned his neck and looked up, and up, and up. It had been a very long fall for Thanos’ favourite daughter. Quill took one look at her and turned on his heel, stumbling away. “He died too quickly,” Drax said over the pitiful sound of Quill’s retching. “He should have suffered more.” Nebula said nothing, staring at her sister; if the clenched fists were anything to go by, she was killing Thanos all over again.

Stephen was the last to arrive. “Step back, everyone.” The words came out indistinct, muffled, nothing like his usual rich baritone.

Resolutely, Tony ignored the questioning, knowing looks the others were shooting him. He had a few bruises on his face and throat where the cloak had gotten its licks in before the helmet of his suit came up and saved him from worse. They were nothing compared to the damage his armoured fist had wrought on unprotected flesh. Stephen had wiped the blood away, but there was no hiding the fresh bruises and swelling around his mouth, or the crusting gashes where his lips had split open against alloyed metal. Combined with the scratches and bruises he’d collected during the tussle with Squidward and the fight against Thanos, he’d be walking around with a face like an impressionistic watercolour painting for at least a month.

Tony didn’t feel a lick of remorse. He’d gotten his moment.

The resurrection was anticlimactic and unnerving both at once. Delicate green bands of archaic symbols formed around Stephen’s wrists and forearms, running counter–clockwise to the background track of the same awful, thin whine of noise Tony had heard on Titan, when the sorcerer peered into the future. Stephen extended a scarred, shaking hand, five points lighting up at the tip of each finger, sketching a filigree design. Time flowed backwards: the sickening crunch of impact, Gamora’s trailing scream. Tony stared at the edge of the platform far above, adrenaline spiking through him; what if Stephen accidentally brought back Thanos, too?

But there was nothing up there, only shadows and fog. Gamora hung in the air, five feet above unforgiving stone, wide–eyed, silent, alive.

Their next stop was a graveyard in space.

– – –

Tony came home to a Pepper who was a stranger to him. Or he was the stranger, the man out of time, a year too early, a year too late.

– – –

He pointed a set of satellite scanners and cameras at the Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich Village. Nothing of interest on the cameras except Wong with shopping bags or take–out, now and then. The scanners immediately began registering weird power surges. Attempts to make heads or tails of them were an exercise in futility. The sorcerers utilized energy, that much was obvious, but where it came from and how they were channelling it defied Tony’s excellent and nuanced understanding of how the universe worked.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the power surges popped up in other parts of New York: first Lower Manhattan, then Midtown, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem, then across the river to the boroughs, all the way down to the Jamaica Bay.

Tony railed at his screens. “They’re spreading. _Why_ are they spreading? What is this, the Hogwarts version of the Black Plague?”

“I don’t know,” FRIDAY told him. “I don’t know,” Pepper said. She said that a lot, these days.

Each time FRIDAY alerted him to a new sighting, Tony flew out to investigate, worried at first, then annoyed and angry, and as time passed with increasing apathy.

Nothing. He found nothing, and nothing found him. No sign of Stephen Strange or his homicidal cloak. When he arrived at the locations marked by the satellites, FRIDAY could no longer detect anything out of the ordinary. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Parks, playgrounds, backyards, the middle of the Hudson River, the roofs of private homes; one time, Tony stood in a lingerie store in the middle of the night.

When he pounded on the door to the Sanctum, nobody opened.

Four months after he returned home, Pepper took off her engagement ring. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“I know,” Tony said. He’d known all along.

– – –

**ONE**

“Boss,” FRIDAY said, late one cold, autumn night, “take a look at this. The central–area scanners over North Bergen are going crazy.”

Tony looked. “Huh, okay, nope, don’t like it.” He suited up and set out.

North Bergen’s 80th Street Park lay empty under the pale light of a sliver of moon when he arrived. Banks of thick fog were rolling in from the Hudson. At the edge of the lake, amid a haphazard scattering of leafless trees, lounged a gelatinous, semi–transparent...jellyfish– _thing_. “What is that?”

“A blob?”

“I regret ever letting Peter and his pop culture references near you,” Tony informed her, but she wasn’t far wrong. It really did look like a blob. The Mark L’s bio–filters picked up molecules of foreign DNA matter. “Run analysis on that, pronto.” He flew circles, repulsors ready to fire. The blob didn’t appear to be doing much. Its gently pulsating bell was slowly stretching toward the water of the lake, the rounded edge ruffling rhythmically. Amphibious? Probably. Terrestrial?

Please, Tony thought, please, please be from Earth.

FRIDAY dashed that hope. “DNA does not match any known terrestrial species or any extraterrestrial samples I have on file. But here’s something interesting. Remember the power surges you told me to stop bothering you with?”

That gave him pause. He hadn’t thought about the power surges in a long time. “Let me guess: match?”

“Yes. The surge occurred 20.4 feet above ground level. The creature is sitting directly beneath it.”

Tony flew another circle. He’d finally found something. Now he just needed to figure out what it was, and what he was going to do with it.

“Boss, incoming on your six,” FRIDAY announced.

Fifty feet below, on the deck of the café near the lake, golden sparks were flickering ghost–like in the fog, expanding to a whirling circle. Even from above, Tony immediately recognized the tall figure stepping into the night; that red cloak was unmistakable. Stephen Strange headed toward the jellyfish–blob at a brisk pace. Ten steps into his dramatic power walk, he slowed and stopped, turning his face up to the sky. The HUD zoomed in on a pair of piercing eyes, narrowed and staring right at Tony.

He was the absolute last person Tony had expected to meet tonight.

Tony landed. “Hi.”

Stephen hadn’t changed. Meticulously trimmed beard, grey streaking the hair at his temples, that ridiculous outfit – check, check, check. Time Stone, check. Ugly memories welled up, quickly suppressed. Stephen’s cloak was waving its pointed collar at him, or maybe it was shaking the equivalent of a fist in warning, Tony couldn’t be sure. His helmet was staying up, just in case.

The piercings were new. Tony prompted the HUD to zoom in. They were arranged in a row from the middle of Stephen’s forehead up to his hairline, bridge piercings if Tony correctly remembered the name of that regrettable fashion fad; three slender bars, half an inch long and capped with tiny balls. He filed the discovery away under _slightly disturbing_ , with a cross reference to _ugh, why_.

Stephen was staring down the length of his nose at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Wow. Not even a hello. That’s cold, real cold. It’s been what, three years?”

“Two years, ten months, six days.”

“You counted the days?” Tony simpered at him. “Aww. Did you miss me that much? I’m flattered.” Stephen’s lips thinned to a bloodless line. Not even a snappy comeback. Disappointing. “Fine, be that way.” Tony pointed at the blob. “What is this, where does it come from, and how do I kill it?”

“You don’t have to kill it. It’s an infant. They’re harmless, even the adults.” The sorcerer resumed his walk. “It came in through a rift.”

“...rift.” Tony flashed back to a dark hole in the sky over New York, and suddenly the suit seemed to be tighter, particularly around his chest. With a boost of repulsors, he overtook the other man, stopping him in his tracks. “What’s going on? What’re you up to?”

“I’m here to send it back, obviously. They can’t survive our atmosphere for long.” Stephen’s neutral façade was beginning to crack, impatience showing through. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.” He stepped around Tony and raised his arms, one hand pulling power out of thin air, opening a portal far larger than the ones Tony had seen him produce before.

Tony looked at what lay on the other side and felt cold all over. That must be the adults Stephen had mentioned. Giants. Jellyfish tall as skyscrapers, suspended in a pale pink expanse dotted with clusters of stars and ominous, obsidian clouds, all held back by nothing more than a flimsy, whirling circle.

Tony stared at the long tentacles trailed by some of them, fragile and shimmering with bioluminescence, and took an abrupt, involuntary step back, feeling sweat break out all over his body as a rush of memories threatened to swamp him. They weren’t the same, they didn’t remotely resemble the leviathans that had accompanied the Chitauri army during the Battle of New York, but the sight evoked another flood of disjointed impressions, of the nuke, the wormhole, the darkness and him falling –

Letters flashed on the HUD. **BREATHE. IN, OUT.**

Tony breathed. In, out. The tight bands around his ribcage eased. He banished old memories to the back of his mind, where they belonged.

Stephen doubled, then tripled the size of the portal he was working on, and then doubled that again, and finally sent the finished construction racing forth with a negligent flick of the wrist. It disappeared in a puff of sparks, taking the jellyfish–blob with it. FRIDAY reported an immediate drop in power levels. The bio–filters noted a drop in foreign DNA density in the area at the same time.

Stephen flexed his fingers, conjuring up yet another fiery circle, this one leading to what looked like a library, full of shelves stuffed to the brim with books. “Bye.”

He had to be kidding. “Not so fast, Merlin.” The sorcerer stopped, one foot through the portal. “What about the rifts? Are there going to be more?”

“Most likely, yes. What’s it to you?”

Tony stared at him in disbelief. “You do know who you’re talking to, yes? Did it ever occur to you that _maybe_ I should know about this?”

“Actually, no, it didn’t occur to me. This is none of your business.”

“ _Everything_ that sets foot or tentacle on this planet uninvited is my business,” Tony declared. Things were beginning to add up in a way he really didn’t like. “How many of these blobs did you send packing since we got back from Titan?” Unprompted, FRIDAY displayed a number on the HUD, much higher than the last number he remembered reading on one of her graphs. “Four hundred and change, that about right?”

Stephen looked surprised, but he quickly caught himself. “This doesn’t involve you. Go home.”

“Great home to go home to if it’s about to be eaten by extraterrestrial sushi,” Tony scoffed. “Drop the act, Strange.”

“I told you, they’re harmless,” Stephen said impatiently. “One, their gastrointestinal system can’t digest our building materials –”

Tony blinked. “I am disturbed by the fact that you know that. _How_ do you know that?”

“It’s called observation,” Stephen snapped. “You could give that a try instead of shooting everything on sight.” His breath misted in the frigid air as he sighed, long, loud, and obnoxious. “Are we done here?”

Tony dropped all pretence of this being just a friendly chat. “Just answer me this: is this an invasion?”

“No.”

The first and last time Tony had trusted Stephen Strange, he ended up skewered on his own nano–blade. The sorcerer had set them up like chess pieces and let them believe their one, victorious future would happen on Titan, then and there, not a year later. “You’ve lied to me before.” Not a lie, precisely: a diversion from the truth. In Tony’s book, the difference between the two was miniscule.

Stephen gave him a haughty glower. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Good night.”

“Strange.”

“ _What_.”

“If I look out the window tomorrow, or next week, or in a month, or a year, and there’s jellyfish all over New York? I’m going to find you, I’m going to kick your ass into the next century, and I won’t need your precious,” Tony pointed at pendant on the sorcerer’s chest, “to do it. We clear?”

“Crystal,” Stephen answered, full of scorn. Cloak flaring, he waltzed off.

“Asshole,” Tony muttered, just before the portal snapped shut.

Helmet off, he took deep lungfuls of cold, fresh air. The encounter had thoroughly unsettled him.

Not power surges. Rifts. Now at least he knew why he never found anything at all those random locations he visited before he gave up the fruitless scavenger hunt. Obviously, Stephen had his own way of detecting where these rifts popped open, and with his portals he got there faster than Tony could ever hope to fly.

Tony stared at the leafless trees. Ignore? Or investigate further? Stephen hadn’t looked worried. But Stephen was also a lying liar who lied to cover up what he was really up to, re: Thanos, with a game face Poker players would kill for.

“Boss, I noticed something unusual about Doctor Strange. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

There wasn’t much FRIDAY hadn’t seen. Tony’s suit cameras were recording 24/7; if she didn’t see it live, she saw it later. He put the helmet back on. “Show me.”

“Doctor Strange’s archived file, from your initial meeting in Central Park.” An anatomical model appeared on the HUD. A neon–green dot marked the Time Stone, a deep indigo, flaring shape the cloak. Species, race, height, weight, gender, hair and eye colour, everything within normal parameters; Stephen was bog standard human. Eleven medical pins in each hand. Compound fractures, severe secondary neuropathy – that car accident had really done a number on him.

“And this is the scan from tonight.” The same anatomical model, now surrounded by a dark, blurry halo in addition to the green dot on its chest and the familiar shape streaming from its shoulders.

And more metal. A lot more metal, ASTM F–136 titanium, surgical grade. Tony felt his eyebrows climb. “How many does he have in total?”

“Seventy–two.”

Forehead, wrists, nape, back, chest – Stephen was practically a pincushion. Nothing in the genital area, which induced a weird feeling of second–hand relief; the thought was enough to make Tony cringe. “FRI,” he groaned, “I did _not_ need to know that.”

“But –”

“No! No buts. If he wants to contribute to the global titanium market, that’s his business, and I don’t want to know about it.”

“The piercings are generating a mobile power field. I thought you’d find that interesting. Sorry, boss.”

FRIDAY sounded wounded, exactly like Peter when he was trying to guilt–trip him into doing something, like upgrading Karen’s interface with an old–school Minecraft module. Which Tony may or may not have secretly uploaded last month. Sometimes, he regretted outfitting his natural–language user interfaces with protocols emulating human characteristics and a learning program.

He heaved a sigh. “Okay, hit me. Piercings only, strip out the other stuff.”

The excessive body jewellery collection was indeed generating a low–level power field. Tony magnified a quadrant of the screen. The ‘halo’ was a mass of hundreds of individual strands thinning to a delicate tip, each one of them waving back and forth, like sea grass in a current. A weird energy pattern, but not the weirdest FRIDAY had on file. Thanos with four Infinity Stones, now _that_ had been a psychedelic show.

He prompted the HUD to clear. Not a threat. If Stephen wanted to play walking hardware store, that was his prerogative.

The rifts were a threat. Tony couldn’t ignore tonight’s events, no matter what Stephen had told him; he’d gotten to the park _before_ the sorcerer, unlike all those other times. Either Stephen was getting sloppy, or something else was going on.

– – –

“Incoming,” FRIDAY announced. “Underoos has landed.”

Tony stared at the lines of numbers and letters on the screen. They stared back at him. “Disengage locks.”

“Hi, To...oh, _wow_.”

Distracted, Tony waved at Peter as he bounded into the lounge. “Hey, kid.” If he could fine–tune the sensors so the central–area array picked up the power signature of the rifts faster, he’d have more time to reach them, ergo, he’d have more time to do something about it in case one of the sorcerer’s pet blobs decided it wanted to challenge the theory? actual field observation? that its species couldn’t digest a house.

Peter appeared at his elbow. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, I’m fine. Just battling some code. And jellyfish.”

“Jellyfish?”

Groping fingers found the cup amid the fast food containers and sandwich plates, sending empty Cup Noodles cups skittering over the bar top. “ _Giant_ jellyfish. From space.” The problem was two–fold, 1) New York and the Greater New York Area were vast, so even if he could shave a few seconds off the identification process he’d still have to use light speed to reach the location, if the rift opened anywhere outside Manhattan, 2) the cup was empty, no coffee, the traitorous thing. “Or from another dimension, not sure, didn’t ask.”

The more he stared at the lines of code before him, the more they blurred. Fumbling the cup back into its nest of work bender debris, Tony blinked his aching eyes, forcing them to focus. What was even the point of untangling the spaghetti? He’d never be fast enough unless he invented instant teleportation right here and now. The last rift, the one he was working off, had opened for a total duration of 48.4 seconds. How much of that was build–up, how much of that was the hole, how much of that was the fading process? Were they _actual_ holes, like Stephen’s portals? Or did the sky just vomit blobs now and then?

A hand appeared under Tony’s nose, startling him. Peter. With _coffee_ , a fresh cup. “I love you,” Tony declared, grabbing the cup and leaving it open to interpretation who he meant, the coffee, or the young man who was eyeing him with concern. “What’s with the long face?”

“When was the last time you slept?” Peter asked.

Tony tried to remember. “What day is it?”

Peter sighed. “Never mind.” He picked up the barstool Tony was sitting on.

“Hey, no,” Tony protested. “Kidnapping. This is kidnapping.”

Peter carried the chair, with Tony on it, to the seating arrangement in the middle of the lounge. “It’s an intervention. Deal with it.”

“Gross misuse of unfair physical strength, we talked about _whoa careful_!” Peter put the barstool down with more force than necessary, causing Tony to nearly drop his cup. Peter plucked said cup out of his hands and put it on the coffee table, out of reach. “Hey, I need that!” Peter plucked _him_ off the barstool and plopped him down on the couch hard enough to make him bounce. “I’m feeling so manhandled right now.”

“Food.” Peter pointed at the bulging, greasy paper bags next to the cup. “I’m gonna clean up that mess. Be right back.” Grumbling under his breath, he stalked off.

“That’s not a mess, that’s my bar!” Tony called after him.

“It’s a mess!” Peter shouted back. “I can’t even _see_ the bar.” Garbage bags rustled. “Oh, _ew_! This one’s got mould on it!”

Tony opened the bags. Tacos. Was it really Wednesday already? The last time he looked at a calendar had been on Sunday evening. Maybe. The smell of marinated meat and salsa made his mouth water. Eagerly, he dug in. “FRI, show Peter the jellyfish,” he said between bites. “Version 2b.”

“Huh, haven’t seen that guy in forever,” Peter commented a vague while later. “...and that’s...giant jellyfish.”

“Told you.” Tony licked marinade off his fingers. “Did you know they can’t eat skyscraper?”

“...no, can’t say I knew that. What’s that on Strange’s face?”

“Bad choices. Lots of bad choices.” Piercings, arc reactors, no difference. Both were things others could rip out. And the sorcerer had _seventy–two_ of them.

Better not think about that. Tony wolfed down another richly stuffed taco, hungrier than he’d realised. The last Cup Noodles had been a while ago. As had been the last shower, a whiff of sweat revealed when he reached for the napkins; oh, yuck. He hadn’t let himself go like this in at least...a month? Maybe two months; time was a funny thing to him now, mutable and inconsistent, the days and weeks running together or away from each other, dragging on endlessly or over too quickly.

Peter took a seat on the other side of the coffee table. He gave Tony a judgmental once–over. “Do I need to cancel the trip?”

“Trip.” Tony drew a blank. “What trip?”

Peter sighed again. “To Europe. With Ned and MJ. I told you two weeks ago. Do I need to cancel? Not sure I can still get a refund on my tickets, but if you need me here...”

 _That_ trip, the two–month round–trip of Europe and the UK, the one Peter had been saving up for forever. Tony’s brain came back online from the advancing food coma. Perfect, that meant Peter would be safely out of the city, the country, off the continent, while Tony dealt with possibly ending up in some _thing_ ’s digestive tract. “What, no. Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

He wasn’t, his gut feeling said otherwise, but what spiders didn’t know couldn’t stomp them. “Positive. I’m just taking a few precautions. It’ll be fine.”

“If you say so.” Peter dug through the paper bags for his share of their monthly taco feast.

Belly full, thoughts drifting, Tony watched him eat. Randomly, he noted Peter needed a shave. That was another funny time thing: one day, Tony had looked over while they were tinkering with their respective suits and realized with a start that he wasn’t looking at a teenager but at a young man, two inches taller than him, with a shadow of stubble darkening the sharp edge of his jaw. It was ‘Tony’ now, not ‘Mister Stark’. Peter lived in his own apartment, jobbed in the junior chemistry department of Stark Industries between college courses, was learning to maintenance the Iron Spider suit by himself; time marched on, Tony wouldn’t be around forever.

“– to someone,” Peter was saying. “Tony. Are you even listening to me?”

Tony blinked his eyes open. Whoops. “Listening. I’m listening.”

“What did I just say?”

“Something something someone.” He gave up the fight against gravity and slumped sideways onto the couch. Whatever, this wasn’t the first time Peter caught him in one of his ‘episodes’, as Peter called them, work benders that could last an entire week and frequently did. “Sorry, Pete. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.”

“Yeah, I _noticed_.” Peter sounded annoyed. Tony forced his eyes open again. He looked annoyed, too. “You _need_ to talk to someone. You need therapy or something, it can’t go on like this. Half the time I get here, you look like you haven’t slept in days. I know what you’re going to say – you never sleep, it’s in your biography, I know, I’ve read it. But it’s like – you dialled that up to eleven after we got back from Titan.”

Unease skittered down Tony’s spine. “No talking about Titan inside the tower.” Or outside the tower, or anywhere. “You know the rules.”

“Fuck the rules,” Peter muttered. “I’m worried about you, man.”

“I’m fine,” Tony insisted.

“Yeah, right,” Peter scoffed, awfully sarcastic. “I can see how fine you are. ‘Version 2b’? What did you edit out of the video that you don’t want me to see?”

Not again. Tony wasn’t nearly awake enough to deal with this.

They’d had this discussion before, over and over again, until Tony put his foot down and declared their monthly meetings a Thanos/Titan–free zone. Peter knew about the time travel and the Year That Never Would Be, but Tony refused to tell him the gory details. It wouldn’t do Peter any good to know that the population had been decimated by half and then decimated _again_ in the minutes that followed, as planes without pilots fell from the sky, buses without drivers ploughed into crowds, doctors vanished mid–operation, and a million cars all over the planet crashed without drivers behind the wheel. Why tell him about the global chaos, collapsed governments, non–existent infrastructure? Or the famines. _All_ living things; flora and fauna had not been exempt from Thanos’ insane brand of mercy.

There was no point in sharing the horror. It would never happen now.

“Pete,” Tony began, “I told you why I don’t –”

“What about Doctor Strange?” Peter interrupted. “You don’t want to talk to me about this stuff, fine, but you could talk to him.”

That came completely out of left field. Tony blinked. “You do remember the whole fist to the face thing?” Peter shrugged, _so?_ “Even if we were on speaking terms, he’s not _that_ kind of doctor, Pete. He was a neurosurgeon, not a shrink.”

“Maybe he isn’t a shrink,” Peter said, “but he was there.” His plain–to–see annoyance faded to a tired sadness. “And he’s the only one left, not counting me.”

He probably hadn’t meant that as a gut punch. Probably.

Later in the afternoon, watching Peter swing off homeward–bound on a more subdued note than their usual good bye, Tony stood at the edge of the helicopter landing pad on the 81st floor of the Stark Tower, shivering in the cold wind. It had been a crisp, beautiful New York day, according to FRIDAY.

With a jaundiced eye, he watched the sun go down.

He’d always loved watching the sun set over the city, _his_ city, his home. When Pepper had still been around and their busy schedules permitted it, they sat outside in the summers, sharing the day’s little details over a bottle of wine. In the winters or when it rained, it had been steaming mugs of coffee or chocolate and them at the large windows of their apartment, one floor below. The Avengers had celebrated their post–battle victories out here, winter or summer, sparred, hung out. Even lived in the tower for a while, while the Upstate New York Compound was under construction.

Post–Titan sunsets were just reminders of what Tony didn’t have anymore.

Pepper lived in Los Angeles now, 2,800 miles away from him, away from falling back into old habits, old temptations. Too many empty, broken promises, and too many more waiting to happen. There could always be another Thanos lurking around the corner, and Tony would always raise the banners and cry war – he couldn’t _not_ , he couldn’t turn his back, stand on the sidelines, wait it out, start a family, pretend he didn’t know what he knew. He’d still be out there when he was eighty, ninety, a hundred years old, if he lived that long, watching, waiting, old bones cast in iron.

Steve was operating out of Wakanda, with Barnes, Natasha, and Sam, sometimes with Vision and Wanda. Steve and Tony had buried the hatchet; Tony had buried the illusion of friendship. They may have been friends, but ‘Bucky’ was the better friend, the one who mattered more, and Tony would never forgive or forget the truth Steve hadn’t told him about his parents’ murder. Captain America and Iron Man were cordial to each other, exchanged information, had agreed to team up when required, nothing less, nothing more. It was for the best.

Carol had disappeared into the great unknown of space. ‘There are other planets that don’t have Avengers,’ she’d told them. ‘They need me more.’ Thor was kinging it over the new Asgardian settlement, far from Earth. Nebula had gone with the Guardians. Clint was out of the game, wanting to be with his wife and see his children grow up. Once in a blue moon, Bruce called or wrote a postcard from some forgotten corner of the planet. Rhodey had retired half a year ago, on his 53rd birthday.

That left Stephen Strange. Who knew. Who’d been there.

Ridiculous. Stephen wasn’t the root of Tony’s problems, that honour went to Thanos and all the weird shit the Avengers had gone through, and further back, Afghanistan, maybe even further back, thanks Dad. But Stephen had certainly contributed to them. Tony’s blood didn’t quite boil still, but the resentment was there, quietly simmering. A hint would have sufficed. _Worse to come. Brace yourself._ Yet Stephen had given him nothing, not even an apology.

Talk to that pompous ass. Tony was sooner going to toss himself off the Party Deck _without_ a suit.

– – –

Calibrating the scanners took the rest of the week. Ready for a field test, Tony waited for a rift.

And waited. And waited some more.

A couple of days after he’d observed Peter and his friends at the airport – making sure Peter really got on that plane and wasn’t trying to pull a fast one – he stood outside the Sanctum Sanctorum on Bleecker Street, in Greenwich Village.

The weather was miserable, cold and wet and overcast, and the few people braving the elements hurried past him with their heads down, paying him no attention as he stared at the door. There had been no door during the Year That Never Would Be. The Sanctum’s street–facing fronts had been solid walls, vandalized advertisement boards on them, smeared with graffiti and riddled with bullet holes. With half their people decimated, the remaining sorcerers must have gone into lock–down mode. There had been no help from that quarter.

Tony knocked. After a short while, something moved behind the inlaid glass panels. The door to the Sanctum opened, revealing a glimpse of Wong’s round face. “Mister Stark. Good morning.”

“I come in peace,” Tony declared, although he didn’t feel very peaceful. He held up the Ben&Jerry’s shopping bag.

Wong hadn’t changed, either. Still the same drab tunic, pants, practical boots, deadpan expression. “This isn’t a good time.”

“Strange getting a new piercing or something?”

“Just not a good time. Sorry.”

Tony stuck his foot in the door before it could close. “I want to talk to Strange. Or to you. Actually, I’d rather talk to you. Now, you can either let me in and we’ll have a chat, or I’m going to blow a hole into this building and make my own door. Your choice.”

Wong’s eyes narrowed at the threat. Just when Tony thought he would have to make good on it, the rotund sorcerer stepped back. “By all means, please, do come in.”

The Sanctum Sanctorum welcomed Tony with thick, oppressive silence. As he stepped over the threshold, he automatically slipped on the HUD glasses. FRIDAY began to identify pockets of energy accumulation where Tony only saw worn sitting arrangements, desks and tables filled with knick–knacks, and shelves full of old books. The place appeared even gloomier than the first time he’d seen it, the fire crackling in the fireplace, the desk and floor lamps doing little to chase away the shadows lurking in the corners and under the high ceiling. He noticed the Cauldron of the Cosmos was gone from its place next to the sweeping, grand staircase leading up to the second floor landing and its great, round, leaded–glass window.

The longer he looked, the more he felt something looking back at him. Tony shivered involuntarily.

Wong shut the door. “What can I do for you?”

“Did Strange tell you we met?”

“He mentioned it.” Wong cocked his head, dubious. “If you’re here to offer your assistance, I’m afraid you lack the necessary talent.”

Offering assistance was not what Tony had in mind when he crawled out of bed two hours ago, sweat–soaked and haunted. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sure why he was here, now that he stood in the Sanctum. Lack of patience, boredom? The work on the satellite scanners complete, he’d planned to wait until a rift opened, head over, investigate. Make sure nothing made it through. None of which required interacting with the sorcerers.

Yet here he was. “I want to know if the rifts and or the jellyfish are dangerous. Strange wasn’t very forthcoming when I asked him.”

Wong snorted under his breath. “He never is, these days. Follow me. Let’s put your bribe away before it melts.”

He led the way to a kitchen behind the staircase. Tony glanced out the single window into a square, walled–in backyard crammed full of wooden crates and objects draped with plastic sheets, slick with rain. The kitchen was decorated olde worlde style: wooden cupboards and shelves, worn floor tiles in a black–and–white chess pattern, the white yellowed with age, a rickety table, two chairs. A cooker that looked so ancient he was willing to bet it still used coal. No hearth, but they did have a cauldron, a small, black–iron one used as a holder for various cooking utensils.

FRIDAY identified the bushels of dried plants and roots dangling from a cord stretched between two cupboards as lavender, chamomile, and mandrake. “Where do you guys keep your sorting hat?”

Wong was storing the ice cream tubs in a freezer that had seen better days. “Please, no Harry Potter jokes. They get really old, really fast.” The freezer lid slammed shut. “I must say, I’m a little surprised you’re here. Did Stephen not tell you there’s nothing to worry about? He told me he did.”

“He did,” Tony admitted, “but I want a second opinion.”

“I’m going to tell you the same he told you. There’s nothing to worry about.” Wong lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “It may come as a surprise to you, but we deal with these rifts, or tears in reality if you will, all the time. It’s a common phenomenon.”

 _Protecting your reality, douchebag_. “And the blobs?” Tony asked, dubious.

“Blobs. What blobs? Oh!” Wong laughed under his breath. “The babies. Cute little things, aren’t they?”

“Babies,” Tony repeated faintly. “That thing in the park weighed 3,000 pounds. You call that – you know what, never mind. They’re really harmless? Absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely,” Wong assured him. “Even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t live long enough to become a threat. Something in our air is poisonous to them. We try to get to them as quickly as possible when they appear, but...” He gave a rueful shrug. “Such is life.” Now Tony felt vaguely sorry for the jellyfish. Irritated, he shook the feeling off. “The worst that could happen is they drop on someone, but even that wouldn’t lead to death, just a bit of slime. They’re very soft, like cotton balls.”

Cottons balls. Right. “You’re not trying to pull the wool over my eyes, are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe because Strange told you to,” Tony suggested.

Amused, Wong said, “Just to clear up a common misconception, Mister Stark, Stephen is the master of this Sanctum, but I’m not his servant. I’m tasked with protecting the Earth as much as he is, and I’ve been doing this job a lot _longer_ than he. If I thought for one moment he was doing anything that jeopardized this place, or the planet...” He trailed off meaningfully.

Put like that...

Sour disappointment spread through Tony’s gut. The preparations, the work bender, pissing off Peter in the process, it had all been a waste of time. Stephen had told him the truth. Deep down, Tony had hoped to catch him in a lie, and then – punch him again? He didn’t even know. “Guess that’s it, then. Thanks, Wong. I’ll just, I can find the door by myself.” He turned to leave.

“Wait. Before you go...” Wong glanced at the ceiling, a quick flick of eyes, and stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Tell me what happened up there. On Titan.”

That came as a surprise. “Strange didn’t tell you?” Wong shook his head. “Nothing at all?”

“Only that Thanos was defeated. He’s been stonewalling me since he returned, and he came back changed.” Now _there_ was a tactic Tony was familiar with. “What happened? I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Please, just tell me.”

Tony debated with himself whether or not he should.

Fuck it, Stephen could deal with the fallout. Wong was a grown man, not an impressionable teenager, and even Peter knew about the time travel. “We got our asses handed to us, that’s what happened. Most of us died up there, including Strange.” Tony began to pace. “That ship took us straight to Titan. When we got there, Strange used the Time Stone to see how we’d do. He told us we had one chance, one future we’d win. Thanos, he was keeping the Infinity Stones in a gauntlet, we tried to get it off him, and Strange let us believe it’d work. But it didn’t, we _lost_. And Strange let us lose.”

Talk to someone, Peter had said. As if talking would help. This wasn’t relief, it was just reliving things he’d rather forget.

Wong was listening with a thoughtful frown. “A ruse.”

“A _lie_ ,” Tony snapped.

“A necessary lie, I’d imagine,” Wong said placidly.

“Necessary, my ass,” Tony muttered darkly. “He let us die.”

“Are you dead?” Tony opened his mouth. Closed it. “Please, continue,” Wong said.

There wasn’t much more to tell. “Strange handed the Time Stone over, Thanos killed half of all living beings in the universe, and the only reason you and I are standing here is because we figured out time travel, and it took us a year to get there. And just between you and me? That year _sucked_. Let’s leave it at that.”

Wong hummed a thoughtful noise. “I see. Thank you for telling me.” He was taking this rather well, Tony thought. Then again, Wong had stood up to Thanos’ enforcers without batting an eyelash; the man was the poster child of stoicism. “One more question. You said Stephen looked into the future. Did he use the Time Stone for anything else? I think he did, he must have.”

Wong was skirting dangerously close to a truth Tony had sworn never to reveal. “What makes you think that?”

“Everything we do resonates in the universe and leaves a trace, a footprint. The Time Stone leaves very _large_ , distinct footprints. Over the centuries we’ve observed that the Nihaudri – the jellyfish – are drawn to that.” Tony stiffened; Nihaudri? Way too close to _Chitauri_. Wong continued, “They’re very curious creatures. They’ve appeared on Earth for as long as the Masters of the Mystical Arts have been guarding the Time Stone, but never in the numbers we’ve seen since Stephen returned from Titan. So he must have used it for something rather...spectacular.”

His visit to the Sanctum had been good for something, after all.

Recalling the post–Titan map of New York FRIDAY had marked with dozens of ‘power surge’ locations, Tony was suddenly so tense with anger he trembled. For hours, he’d stared at that map, watching the surges – the _rifts_ –spread from Greenwich Village to the rest of the city, wondering why, how. Mystery solved. Stephen. Raising the dead had invited the jellyfish to come nosing around.

 _The wizard advised against bringing back more_.

Stephen had known this would happen. And again, he hadn’t warned anyone. Even if there wasn’t anything dangerous about the jellyfish, Tony was still going to _murder_ the sorcerer; what was Stephen suffering from, a pathological aversion to clue others in to what he was doing? A need to be all high and mighty and mystical? “I’m not going to tell you what he used it for. Don’t ask.”

“I know what the Time Stone can do, I have personally experienced its powers,” Wong said cryptically. Tony sensed there was a story there.

Something Wong had mentioned nagged at him. “You said he came back changed. Changed how?”

“He acts as if there’s a war around the next corner, or another Thanos.” Tony was taken aback; that sounded familiar, too. “He’s always taken his duties seriously, but now...” Wong glanced at Tony. “You saw the lines.”

“Lines, what lines?” Wong pointed at his brow. “The piercings? I know they’re generating a low–level power field.” Curiosity reared its accident–prone head. “I figured he was using them as a shield of some sort.”

“They’re more than that.” Wong beckoned. “Come. I’ll show you. You need to know, in case you decide to punch him again.” A sidelong, shrewd glance. “That _was_ you, wasn’t it?”

Tony shrugged. “He deserved it.”

Halfway up the grand staircase, he began to wonder why would anyone want to live in the Sanctum. On top of the constant feeling of being watched, it felt as though there was too much s _pace_ and not enough room. The gloom–and–doom decorative style continued on the second floor, but now they were really beating him over the head with it. Wong led the way past rows upon rows of showcases displaying threadbare shirts with suspicious stains on them, ancient, rusted weapons, mummies, grinning porcelain dolls, and a hundred other items whose function Tony could only guess at, some of them so old they were falling apart in their glass caskets.

Here and there, he thought he saw movement. When he turned his head to look, everything was still. The information FRIDAY was gathering from his surroundings contained endless strings of question marks.

Wong stopped at a door at the end of a long hallway. “Be very quiet,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Because they can hear.”

As if this whole experience wasn’t already creepy enough. FRIDAY indicated there was a single beating heart behind the door, a single body with a power signature Tony was becoming way too familiar with. Fingers on the edge of the nano–compartment, he leaned in to Wong. “I have a stun beam at my disposal, and I’m not afraid to use it. If Strange comes shambling out of there going ‘wooo’...”

Wong rolled his eyes. “He’s asleep. And I suggest you don’t shoot him with anything, or you’ll be the one going ‘woo’. Now, quiet.”

He laid his palm against the door. Noiselessly, it swung open, revealing –

An ordinary bedroom.

The centre piece was a bed, an old, massive thing with four carved posters, heaped with faded quilts, blankets, pillows. Atop: Stephen Strange, dead to the world.

Tony had braced himself for something more dangerous than a blissfully snoozing sorcerer. Stepping into the bedroom, he looked around. Towers of books and heaps of parchment scrolls on the bedside tables and the old–fashioned writing desk at the window. One entire wall was dedicated to deep shelves filled top to bottom with even more books and scrolls. In one corner stood a dresser, its doors slightly askew. In another, an armchair, the cloak draped over the back, and a reading lamp on a small table.

Tony turned his attention to the man on the bed.

Stephen was bare–chested, his naked feet tucked half under a blanket. Curled up on his side away from the window, he breathed slowly and deeply. Both hands were trembling. Tony noted the shadow of ribs, the starkly visible collar bones, the waistband of the ratty pair of sweatpants Stephen was wearing loose around his narrow hips. Without his customary get–up of layered clothing to mask it, he was leaner than first impressions had suggested.

Tony’s gaze was drawn to the glints of metal on skin: a long row of piercings down the path of Stephen’s spine, starting at the hairline of his nape, ending in the small of his back; half–moon rows over his nipples; a sunburst pattern under his clavicle. He even had some on the back of his left wrist, a short row, like an open bracelet. Tony scrutinized the other wrist and caught a glimpse of silvery grey there, too.

He turned to Wong. Shrugged, palms up. _And?_

Wong lifted a hand, fingers curled into a fist. A tiny, glowing disk began to whirl above his knuckles. Stephen began to bleed ink.

Thunderstruck, Tony watched the black droplets curl and stretch. Diaphanous, narrow bands of darkness unrolled from the ball caps of each subcutaneously embedded metal bar, swaying slowly, blind things searching for prey. They grew to an inch in length, then two inches. Kept growing. Five inches now. Stephen stirred, a shifting of long limbs and a soft sound of pain.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony noticed a flash of red. The cloak, making frantic shooing motions.

Wong extinguished the glowing disk, beckoning him out of the room, carefully easing the door shut once they were back in the hallway. “Come,” he murmured, walking away at a fast pace. “Quickly.”

Heart pounding, cold all over, Tony followed him, almost in a daze. He’d seen craziness before, but this topped it. It wasn’t until they reached the bottom of the grand staircase that he found his voice again. He grabbed Wong by the arm and dug his heels in. “Stop. Stop, stop, stop. What was that?”

“They are the Lines That Hold,” Wong said gravely, “and they are going to kill him." He gave Tony a once-over. "Let’s sit down. You’re looking a little pale.”

Before he could protest or do anything else, like run screaming for the hills, Tony found himself sitting at the kitchen table. Vertigo rolled through his gut. Wong was walking around the kitchen, opening cupboards, filling a pot–bellied water kettle at the sink. Gripping the edge of the table, Tony waited for the nausea to pass. “FRI, how did I get here?”

“I have _no_ idea, boss.”

“A simple teleportation spell,” Wong said, putting the kettle on the cooker. “Do you take sugar in your tea?”

“I don’t drink tea.”

Nevertheless, Wong carried a tray to the table. The cup he pushed into Tony’s hand was small, earthenware, very hot, its contents smelling strongly of herbs. “Chamomile, boss,” FRIDAY informed him. Tony tried a sip. The tea tasted like it smelled, sad and flat, without the caffeine kick he craved, but it helped drive away the chill. Wong bustled around for another minute and returned with ice cream, a tub for each, and table spoons.

Tony glanced at the tub label. Stark Ravin’ Hazelnut. Somewhere in the depths of the Sanctum, a grandfather clock struck the hour. Surreal. This was so surreal. FRIDAY had nothing for him; she was churning out question mark after question mark. The power readouts on the HUD were _insane_. Tony took off the glasses, rubbing his eyes. “Strange dabble in dark magic and now it’s going to eat him?” From the inside out, too; _god_ , those things had looked like _worms_.

“All magic can be dark,” Wong said. “It’s the intention that matters. Electricity can kill a man, but it can also start a man’s heart.”

“You need a refresher course in first aid,” Tony muttered. “So, no spewing pea soup? His head isn’t suddenly going to start spinning?”

“You’ve been watching too much TV,” Wong diagnosed. He ate a spoonful of ice cream. “Stephen isn’t possessed. The Lines That Hold are a protection spell, very old, very powerful. Harmful, too,” he tacked on with a sigh. “Think of them as a watchdog. You get close, it barks. You get too close, it bites. I suggest you refrain from any further physical altercations, it wouldn’t go well for you. Better yet, don’t touch him at all.”

Tony rolled that around for a bit. Now that he was slowly moving past the initial shock, the concept itself struck him as weirdly ingenious, stomach–turning visuals aside. “How is it harming him?”

“The spell feeds off the bearer’s substance to power itself, once it’s anchored by the piercings,” Wong explained. “He’s already lost weight, more than he can spare if you ask me. Eventually, the spell will consume him if he’s not careful. And he _isn’t_ careful. That idiot went above and beyond what the Lines require to function properly. They don’t need that many anchors.”

“How many are normal?”

“One,” a voice said from behind.

Jarred, Tony looked over his shoulder. The subject of the impromptu crash course in ‘magic’ was standing in the kitchen door. Bleary–eyed, hair a mess, Stephen didn’t look happy to be awake, and even less happy with Tony’s presence. Still barefoot, he’d thrown on a threadbare t–shirt, and the cloak was draped over his shoulder like a towel. All in all, a far cry from the stylishly coiffed sorcerer Tony had met three years ago.

The ass had to have done that on purpose, waiting long enough for the perfect opening in the conversation, and he’d used the _exact_ same tone of voice he’d used on Titan, that ominous ‘one’. “Eavesdropping.” Tony clicked his tongue. “Not very nice.”

“Neither is tattling.” Stephen turned an impressive glower on Wong, who didn’t look at all contrite. “I’d appreciate it if you could refrain from involving outsiders. I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” Wong asked flatly. “Do you, really?”

“Yes.” Stalking into the kitchen, Stephen eyed the ice cream tubs, the cups, finally Tony. “Why are you here?”

Nonchalantly, Tony picked up his glasses, hooking them into the collar of his shirt and prompting FRIDAY to take a more in–depth look at the man. “Me? Nothing important. Just making sure I know all I need to know about your pet jellyfish. Your track record isn’t the greatest when it comes to informing others about what’s really going on.” Stephen stiffened at the dig. Unease mingled with Tony’s satisfaction; in the light of day the piercings on Stephen’s brow and wrists stood out starkly, ominous reminders of what was hiding under his skin.

“Stephen,” Wong began, “you have to –”

“No.” Between one step and the next, Stephen was dressed, tunic, boots, pants, belts, the cloak properly around his shoulders. “I’m going out.”

“But you only just came back from night patrol!”

The sorcerer strode off. “Bye!” Tony called after him. “Have a good day! Until next time! Let’s do this again!”

“Let’s not,” came the faint reply, followed by the sizzle–snap of a portal outside the kitchen.

“I could _strangle_ him,” Wong grumbled. “See what I mean?”

Tony was currently entertaining violent ideas of his own, particularly the application of his boot to the sorcerer’s hindquarters. That walking away thing was getting old quickly. Three years ago, Stephen had been arrogant and standoffish when they met, but there’d been glimpses of wry humour and a keen intellect under the prickliness. Now he was just downright hostile without redeeming qualities. And he’d developed a death wish, apparently.

“Did you try taking his toys away from him? They’re ordinary piercings, as far as I can tell – studs and a subdermal bar. Unscrew one stud, the whole thing comes out, problem solved. If they're a threat to him, the cloak’ll probably help hold him down if he resists.” Three years ago, said cloak had done a good job of nearly strangling Tony aboard the _Benatar_. It had held back _Thanos_ , if only for a short while. Stephen already had a watchdog, a pretty damn loyal one; he didn’t need seventy–two others.

Wong tugged off the cloth strips securing his tunic’s sleeves to his wrists, baring his forearms. Tony sucked in a quiet breath. Wrists to elbows, Wong’s skin was marked by criss–crossing lines wrapped around each limb, an inch or so wide. They looked like old burn scars, and there were a lot of them.

“I told you,” Wong said, “no touching.”

Twenty minutes later, Tony stepped out of the Sanctum Sanctorum into the grey day. For a long moment, he stood on the sidewalk, watching the people hurry past, and imagined Stephen among them, a walking disaster armed with seventy–two ticking time bombs. Did sorcerers do grocery shopping? He recalled the video footage of Wong with take–out bags. Did Stephen take afternoon walks in the park? What did it take to set off the spell – an innocent bump by a passer–by’s shoulder? The brush of an elbow in the crowd?

Stephen wasn’t just an asshole with a death wish and a petty streak a mile long, he was _dangerous_. Loki levels of dangerous. Wanda levels of dangerous. What was he _thinking_?

Tony walked to his car and threw himself behind the wheel, slamming the door. “FRI. Pinpoint Strange’s location. I want tabs on him, stat.”

“I’m not sure how exact of an account I’ll be able to provide,” she warned him. “Doctor Strange’s energy signature is unique enough to allow for quick identification, but his portals are going to be even more of a challenge than the rifts. By the time I’ve located him, he may have already moved on. Outside of the greater New York area, I won’t be able to locate him at all.”

Extending the central–area scanners’ coverage beyond New York was something Tony had been keeping on the back burner. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he thought about Pepper, safe and sound in Los Angeles. Just a portal away. Did Stephen take sight–seeing trips?

He started the car. “I want coffee waiting for me when I get home.” He had work to do.

– – –

 


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO**

“Do I want to know why Stark Industries installed satellite equipment all over Los Angeles?” Pepper asked. “The invoice landed on my desk today.”

Tony aimed for jovial. “Don’t worry about it, Pep. It’s nothing.”

“It’s always something.”

Whenever they spoke these days, which wasn’t often, there was always an undercurrent of suspicion threaded through the conversation, Pepper second–guessing everything he said, did, planned to do. On better days, it slid right off him. Not today. “Remember that guy who kidnapped me from Central Park? Tall, red cloak, came through a glowy circle, Bruce in tow.” In truth, it hadn’t been much of a kidnapping. Tony had followed Bruce and Stephen to the Sanctum willingly, almost eagerly, hypothetical children and if he and Pepper were going to have one called Morgan shoved to the back of his mind. “He’s gone off the deep end. I need to keep tabs on him in case he decides to branch out.”

Pepper’s sigh rustled across the connection. “Avengers business.”

Technically. The Avengers were still toast, old, stale, dry. “Yes.”

She hung up.

Tony battled the urge to throw the phone across the room. The once rock–solid foundation of his life had become unsteady ground, landmine country, a future friendship a distant possibility, not a certainty. Pepper had moved on. She was doing the sane, healthy thing, going out and dating men Tony told himself not to look at too closely and then vetted to the shallow bottoms of their 9–to–5 lives, anyway: accountants, lawyers, teachers, art critics. Vanilla. Not–him, not–Iron–Man, not flying up, up and away on alien space ships. Reliable men. _Safe_ men.

In his darker hours, he hoped they bored her.

Moodily, he puttered around his workshop. He prodded his latest project, a barkeep robot, DUM–E’s younger, marginally less clumsy brother. His heart wasn’t in it. He turned to his screens, studying data he’d studied a hundred times already. _“_ C’mon, Merlin. Do something. Distract me.” The LA satellite receivers were online. FRIDAY had done the fine–tuning without his input. She’d had two weeks to practise on New York, the results displayed on a new grid map of the city and the surrounding area.

Stephen Strange was a busy little bee.

After a week of watching the map light up like a demented Christmas tree every night, Tony had begun to suspect he’d finally encountered someone whose sleep pattern was even worse than his own. Stephen’s daytime haunts could be counted on the fingers of one hand: a tea shop on Morton, a couple of book stores and antiques shops near Gramercy Park, the Sanctum Sanctorum, delis. Normal. Predictable.

His nights were a different story. As soon as the sun went down, the portals began popping up: from Greenwich Village to the boroughs, north to south, east to west, zig–zags, loops, curves, backtracks, from one end of the city to the other to the centre, like a demented game of whack–a–mole – and Tony without a hammer. He ran the locations through decryption programs to see if they followed a set pattern. Each night, he ended up with a different connect–the–dots mess. It reminded him of the months after Titan when he’d tried to keep up with the sorcerer’s erratic appearances; not a fond memory, that.

So far, neither Stephen nor a rift had appeared in Los Angeles.

And if he did, what then?

The question had been stewing in the back of Tony’s mind for days. Stephen dressed like a clown and sometimes talked like someone who’d been watching too much Lord of the Rings, but he was a powerhouse. He’d held his own against Thanos for quite some time. Add the Time Stone he was as attached to as a limpet to its rock, the murderous, sentient cloak, and that creepy, black goo he was playing host to now...

Tony would have to immobilize Stephen’s hands first. He’d learned that much from the crappy quality surveillance footage capturing parts of the fight between Thanos’ motivational mouthpiece and the sorcerers. The hands first, then the cloak...and in the meantime, Tony would be eaten alive by the spell. Those worms had come crawling out although Stephen had been asleep and Wong hadn’t even been touching him. It followed logically that they would react to _any_ threat, regardless of their host’s state: asleep, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated.

Kill him, then. Long distance. Nukes. Safer. Easier. No other way.

“Fuck,” Tony sighed.

“Boss?”

“Nothing.”

“Shall I start up the decryption programs? It’s almost night.”

Outside the windows, the sky was shading from late afternoon hues to night–time grey. Soon, the pulsing dot would vanish from the Sanctum Sanctorum and reappear somewhere else, anywhere else. Bushwick, maybe. Or Mott Haven. What did it matter? Pepper was 2,800 miles away, safe and sound and hating him, or at least not liking him very much; the Time Stone was here. Three years, give or take a few weeks, and zero people had been killed by blobs. Zero people had been eaten alive by black worms, and that zero included Peter and Rhodey.

The paranoia–fuelled single–mindedness that had driven Tony to new heights of productivity petered out suddenly and completely. A headache was beginning to pulse behind his eyes. Pre–emptive strikes, that was what people like Ross did. “Nah.” Taking care of the mess could wait until tomorrow.

He took a quick shower. The last thing he was aware of was his cheek hitting the pillow.

FRIDAY woke him up what felt like the blink of an eye later. “He hasn’t moved in five minutes,” she said as he stumbled out of the bedroom, rubbing the grit from his eyes. “And there’s a blob at his location.”

“Do we have visual?”

“Negative. They’re too far out in the bay.”

Half past three in the night. This was not what Tony had meant when he asked for a distraction. He was going to have words with Stephen, _words_.

The night was cold, wet, and windswept. Off Hamilton Beach, the Jamaica Bay was churning angrily. Buffeted by sheets of thin rain, Tony made record time to the indicated coordinates, a jut of barren rock bracketed by two narrow gravel banks. The tiny island was located so far out in the bay that the dome of diffuse light cupping New York’s skyline was only a suggestion against the sky.

From above, the Nihaudri lying half in, half out of the water was starkly white against the gravel and made for a great homing beacon. It was smaller than the one in North Bergen, flatter, weighing an estimated 1,000 pounds. Hundreds of small pieces of gelatinous matter dotted the bank in a spray pattern. More were breaking off its bell with each push and pull of the waves. It must have fallen from a far greater height than the one in the park.

Curiosity really did kill the cat sometimes.

Standing on a large rock at the highest point of the island, the cloak billowing in the wind, Stephen looked like a ghost. He was staring into the distance with the kind of fixed, empty gaze that had always made Tony uneasy when he encountered it in soldiers during his heyday as the Merchant of Death, an unkindly reminder that there was more to war than innovation and profit. The Year That Never Would Be had been full of thousand–yard stares. Thor had been especially good at them.

Tony landed, keeping several arm’s lengths of distance between them. “Before you ask why I’m here, let me save you the time.” He held up a finger. “Seventy–two things that look like they came straight out of some horror hentai flick.” The second finger went up. “The fact that you’ve obviously lost your tiny mind.” Stephen reacted with a slow, lethargic blink, still staring at nothing. “Earth to Strange. Hello? Anyone home?”

The pale eyes focused on Tony. “You consider me a threat.”

“No shit. Why don’t _you_ consider you a threat? Wong looks like he went toe to toe with one of the bigger versions of your pets blobs and lost.”

“I warned him. He chose not to listen.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

Stephen stepped off the rock. “I’m going to clean up.”

“What –”

A sizeable portion of the island was suddenly engulfed in a roaring, bright blaze. Startled, Tony swung one hand at the fire, repulsor whining, but it was only the carcass of the Nihaudri that was burning, twisting, scarlet tongues of fire erupting from lightning fissures and blackening craters in its bell. The pieces scattered over the gravel bank evaporated in thin tendrils of smoke. Even the bobbing bits of alien goo in the water went up in flames, a trail of glowing embers leading out to the open ocean. The spectacle was over quickly. A pop, and the fire was gone. So was their extraterrestrial visitor. Only flakes of ash remained, tossed about by the wind.

Six seconds to incinerate one thousand pounds of alien. Tony was, reluctantly, more than just a little impressed; he was disturbed. Stephen hadn’t performed any of the showy hand motions or generated any glowing symbols.

“Good night,” Stephen said.

Tony turned his head just in time to catch a glimpse of red cloak disappearing through a portal. “You gotta be kidding me. Where’d he go?” FRIDAY brought up the map. The new location was closer to the Stark Tower than Tony was comfortable with after that display of power. Upside: there wasn’t an inch of the island of Manhattan he didn’t have eyes on. If the cameras weren’t his already, they became his at a simple command.

FRIDAY’s stream, borrowed from New York’s harbour patrol, showed Stephen doing something to the air. The angle of the camera made it hard to see what. “Top speed, FRI.”

The sorcerer was still on the roof of the East River Park Amphitheatre when Tony reached that side of Manhattan, fiddling with milky strands of fog vacillating around a spot of air the size of a football, bright greyish–pink. “Rift,” FRIDAY judged. “In the opening stage.”

Stephen’s hands were limned in a faint, shimmery glow. “This is becoming bothersome,” he commented as Tony landed on the edge of the sloped roof. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Even as he’d raced across the city at a speed usually reserved for Peter–related incidents, Tony had fully expected to come too late. Not counting North Bergen, he’d been too late every time. Tonight, he’d caught up to Stephen twice. With no distracting, dead blobs around, he noted what he hadn’t paid attention to in the bay: the bags of puffy skin under Stephen’s eyes, his slumped shoulders. “Just out of curiosity, what’re your worms going to do if you keel over?” Specifically, what were they going to do to innocent bystanders attempting to help the weirdo in the cosplay getup? Did the spell recognize good intentions? Wong’s burn scars said otherwise.

“They’re not worms.”

“You didn’t answer the question. Does that mean you don’t know, or that you don’t care? Seriously, what possessed you? You have this,” Tony nodded at the Time Stone, “the cloak, and your powers. That’s already more of an offensive arsenal than most of us can boast of having.”

Stephen finished petting the rift. The fog and the shimmery glow disappeared with a whispery sound. “You of all people should understand.”

Tony sure did. Better, faster, more resilient suits, better, more powerful weapons, better, more thorough surveillance: the last decade of his life in a nutshell, to the point where he’d dreamed of building a suit of armour around the world, around Pepper, everyone – impenetrable, threat–repelling, _safe_. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. He’d ended up building Ultron instead.

It wasn’t the _why_ that bothered him, he’d figured that out while he was still at the Sanctum. Anyone getting their ass beat by the big bad’s mere henchman would want to make sure that didn’t happen twice, especially with something as valuable as an Infinity Stone at stake. It was the _what_ that caused him to question Stephen’s sanity. All other concerns disregarded still left a sorcerer who carried seventy–two Ultrons under his skin, eating him alive. “Take it from someone who’s been there, done that, and left a country–sized hole in the planet: get rid of the jewellery before it tries to get rid of you.”

It was as if Stephen hadn’t even heard. There it was again, that thousand–yard stare. “I won’t be caught a second time.”

Famous last words. Tony didn’t need FRIDAY to perform a health scan to know that his sorcerer–shaped conundrum was sooner or later going to take care of itself. Permanently. The signs of exhaustion and weight loss were there, written in skin stretched too tightly over bone. Half a year, maybe a year, and then fare thee well and good riddance. He wouldn’t even have to get his hands dirty, wouldn’t have to try to justify his doings to himself if all he had to do was _nothing_.

Stephen blinked himself back to the present, turning his face into the wind. His gaze sharpened. “I have to go.”

Like a hound taking up a scent, reminding Tony of Peter and his ‘spider sense’. “Another rift?” FRIDAY hadn’t yet reported anything new on the map. “You’d think your pet blobs would’ve figured out by now that coming here isn’t exactly healthy for them. Try pinning a note to the next one you send back. Here there be dragons and poisonous air.” Stephen stared at him, askance. No sense of humour, this one.

Stephen kept staring, and then narrowed his eyes and said, “Stop following me. I have little enough time to reach the rifts without you distracting me.”

“I thought you have all the time in the world.”

A wan smile. “That’s the kind of thinking that got me into this mess.” And on that cheerful note, the sorcerer was gone.

FRIDAY tracked him down in Brownsville, across the river. The residential neighbourhood was famous for its crime rate, infamous for the NYPD’s rigorous application of their controversial stop–and–frisk program in the area. Keep an eye on him, Tony almost ordered. The things that went bump in the night had far more to fear from the man stalking baby rifts than said man from them.

But Stephen was getting sloppy. He was slowing down.

Tony flew back to the tower, peeled the suit off, made coffee. No sense in going back to bed; he was wide awake and it wasn’t like he had a schedule to keep. Despite the abrupt wake–up, he’d gotten a solid seven hours in before FRIDAY roused him, more than he slept most nights, and for once there hadn’t been any nightmares. What to do with this brave new day? He checked his mail, checked on his people: Pepper in a board meeting, Rhodey asleep. Peter was harder to locate – Tony definitely needed more eyes in Europe – but eventually he managed to catch sight of him and his two friends in a café in Paris, near the Arc de Triomphe, bent over a map of the city.

“Doctor Strange is back at the Sanctum,” FRIDAY said, some time later, when the morning sun stood cold and bright in the sky.

“How many places did he go tonight?”

“Fifty–two.”

Nothing. All he had to do was nothing. Stephen Strange wasn’t one of his friends, real or so–called. He wasn’t even an Avenger, former or current.

Who was he kidding? He’d already made up his mind. “Get me a line to New Asgard.”

It took all morning to establish a working connection and send a concisely–worded inquiry. Thor had taken his people far into the deep reaches of space. Prior to their encounter with Thanos, the Asgardians had been driven from their ancestral home, their numbers cut by more than half in the wake of ancient prophecy. They needed time and space to heal, to thrive, to rebuild. Thor’s farewell had had a ring of finality to it; he, too, needed time and space to heal and grow into the crown he’d reluctantly inherited. Any future visits to Earth, Tony suspected, would not be taking place in the average Avenger lifetime.

Tony passed the time scouring the internet for everything related to Stephen Strange. Shortly before noon, he finally got a reply. “What’s Reindeer Games say?”

The screen flickered, the long–distance signal distorted by the masses of planetoids, stars, and asteroid fields between Earth and the new Kingdom of Asgard. “I’ll not repeat what he _said_.” Thor looked regal against a backdrop of clear, blue skies framed by stuccoed pillars. He had a forked beard down to his chest now, plaited with tiny gold rings. His eyes were still mismatched. “The gist is that Doctor Strange chose his protection well. Loki is still researching in our libraries, but – _hey_ –”

The screen flickered again. When it steadied, Loki was squeezed in next to Thor. He was the same as always, feral smile, black hair. “I am done researching, and I am pleased to report that your doctor – who, let it not go unmentioned, left me to fall for _thirty minutes_ , as if I were not a _god_ and he a _lowly –_ ”

“Loki!” Thor bellowed. “Remember who you owe your life to!”

“...as I was saying before my oaf of a brother so rudely interrupted – what?”

Thor grinned. “You called me brother. Again. That is the third time this week.”

“Oh, shut up, you,” Loki huffed. “Stark, the doctor is going to die.”

The flat finality didn’t quite come as a surprise. “When?”

“Today, tomorrow, five years from now, who knows?” Loki shrugged. “An Asgardian could sustain the Lines that Hold for centuries, forever if care was taken to ensure danger did not befall them every other day. The other sorcerer – Wong? He had the right of it. The Lines feed on life force, of which you mortals have preciously little. If Strange were to retire to some distant abode, far from fighting, he would likely live the full span of his years.” The trickster’s gaze was knowing. “Something tells me he isn’t doing that.”

Stephen had been doing the exact opposite for three years. “How do I get it off him?”

“Removing the anchors is the only way.”

“No counter spells?”

Loki snorted dryly, ignoring the warning look Thor shot him. “It wouldn’t be much of a protection spell if it could be countered. Strange can remove the anchors himself, or he can agree to let someone else do it. The spell cannot be undone without consent, unless you wish to see the doctor dead and go at him with a spell or other attack that instantly kills him. Knock him out and the Lines will rise to defend their host...and Stark, know this: they are much, _much_ more dangerous if the host isn’t awake to control them.”

So far, Loki wasn’t telling Tony anything he didn’t already know or had suspected. He’d been hoping for something overlooked, something that wasn’t common knowledge. “What happens if he dies?”

“Nothing. The Lines die with him.” A bit of the vengeful, sack–of–cats–crazy Loki surfaced in a thin–lipped smirk. “Consider yourself lucky. The version of the spell I found mention of in our libraries suggests the use of branding irons to create anchoring scars. I would _love_ to watch him attempt to –” Thor socked him in the shoulder. Hard. “...I mean, removing that would be a nightmare.” Loki glared at Thor. “ _Ow_.”

“I am sorry that we have not better news for you, Stark,” Thor said. “We owe Strange a debt. If there is anything Asgard can do, let me know.”

Loki was all wide–eyed innocence. “I know a few spells that instantly –”

“Oh, you – farewell, Man of Iron! Loki! Get back here –” Thor hurled himself after his cackling brother. The screen went black.

Still Shakespeare in the Park, these two. Tony took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “FRI?”

“I got nothing.”

To the world in general Kamar–Taj, the Sanctums, and the Masters of the Mystic Arts didn’t exist. FRIDAY’s trawling of digitized books and documents hadn’t yielded a single mention of them. Neither had the ‘borrowed’ S.H.I.E.L.D. files. HYDRA had named Stephen Strange among the people they considered a potential threat to their plans of world domination, but that monster had lost all its heads by now thanks to a certain super–soldier, so that trail went nowhere, and they’d listed _pre–sorcery_ Stephen, anyway, the surgeon, not the cloak–wielding maniac.

Tony briefly considered contacting Wakanda. T’Challa would likely be happy to offer his assistance, but then Natasha would inevitably find out about it, and then good, old Cap would get wind of it, and where Cap went Bucky was never far, and no thanks, bye. He discarded the idea quickly.

End of the road. Tony had done his due diligence. Thor and by extension Loki had been his last resort.

Better stop before he became too involved. Better not get involved at all.

But letting Stephen die didn’t sit well with him, no matter how often he told himself that it was the easier, safer, saner choice. Stephen’s biography read like a rip–off of his own: success, downfall, resurrection, minus the multi–million dollar business providing a safety net. Tony had come back from his downfall wearing an iron suit, Stephen had returned wielding otherworldly powers. Both were considered luminaries in their respective fields even today, although Tony hadn’t invented anything groundbreaking in years and Stephen’s accident had ended his medical career for good.

They even were uncannily similar beyond their publicly accessible _curricula vitae_. Former colleagues described Stephen as someone whose skill they admired but whose personality was ‘difficult’, which was a nicer way of saying he had a massive ego than outright calling him an egocentric asshole. Going by experience, said ego had survived the car accident intact. Tony couldn’t recall anyone he’d ever come to verbal fisticuffs with so quickly; they had clashed within minutes of meeting. Not even Steve Rogers at his bullheaded best had managed that.

Yet there had been moments on the Maw’s ship, on Titan, when they worked hand in hand as if they’d done nothing else for years. There had been that soft–spoken _Tony_ , full of regret. There had been those few minutes on the _Benatar_ when Tony poured a year’s worth of anger, anguish, and heartbreak into a punch Stephen didn’t attempt to evade or block. Letting the man who’d set their collective asses on the winning track die felt wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

“FRI, start a new project file.”

“Name?”

Tony wasn’t in the mood for clever quips. “Strange.”

– – –

Going by general observations, the Nihaudri went about their business of following that tasty trail of _Eau de Time Stone_ only at night, which probably said something about their outlook on life in general. Tony set out into the last light of a blood–red sunset. No time for memories, fond or otherwise: he was on a mission. Waiting for FRIDAY to announce a nearby rift, he flew long, leisurely circles over Manhattan Island. Sooner or later, his path and Stephen’s were bound to cross.

He was still circling when the last of the natural light had yielded to New York’s light pollution halo. By now, Stephen should have been bopping across the city like a rabbit on crack and Tony should have been hot on his trail. “Doctor Strange is still at the Sanctum,” FRIDAY told him, as she’d told him ten minutes ago, fifteen minutes ago. “Maybe he overslept?”

The likelihood of that occurring was close to zero, in Tony’s opinion. He altered the course, heading to Greenwich Village.

A leaden calm lay over the area, particularly Bleecker Street. Iron Man was so ingrained in the New York mind that his appearance resulted in a moment of collective breath–holding as everybody waited to see if they should start running for their lives or if they could go on with their day. Tony took off the suit. “Just here to visit someone,” he announced. “World’s not ending.”

A few nervous laughs. The inevitable tourist snapped the inevitable picture. The daily trot resumed.

It was too quiet.

No honking cars. No ringing phones. People spoke in hushed whispers and avoided eye contact as they hurried past. As Tony walked up to the Sanctum, a feeling of unease crept up on him, like he’d rather be anywhere else. It made his skin crawl.

He knocked on the door. “Doctor Strange is inside,” FRIDAY said as he waited. “I cannot detect Wong, though.”

Tony knocked again. His fist hit air.

He stumbled to a stop in the Sanctum’s foyer and would have been a lot more freaked out by the sudden relocation if Wong hadn’t pulled the same trick on him the first time he visited – only, there was no sign of Wong now, or of Stephen. He looked around, waiting for the seasick feeling to fade. The fireplace was cold. The lamps were off. The doorway behind the grand staircase showed an empty kitchen. “Where is he?”

“Doctor Strange is on the second floor.” FRIDAY produced an electronic sigh. “The Sanctum appears to have a dampening effect on the sensors.”

Foot on the first step, Tony paused. “How so?”

“They’re now registering rift energy.”

He put the suit back on.

The creepy–crawly sensation of something taking a long, hard look at him came back with a vengeance as he climbed the stairs. The showcases on the second floor were arranged differently and had new exhibitions: brass rings, grubby–looking jewellery, terracotta shards, a stuffed iguana. A large wooden trunk guarding a smaller metal chest opened its lid and yawned at him as he walked past; Tony swore he saw a tongue. And teeth. The hallway leading to Stephen’s bedroom was gone, replaced by a wall, plain and empty, the ageing fleur–de–lis wallpaper discoloured by water stains.

“The second–floor layout no longer matches what I have on file,” FRIDAY said. “Shall I remap?”

It would be a waste of bytes. The Sanctum apparently changed its structure at will. That, or the sorcerers spent a lot of time on recreational brick–laying and wallpapering. “Don’t bother.” He was getting sick of the haunted house tour; he seemed to be walking in circles. “Show me the shortest way to Strange.” If he had to, he was going to go _through_ the walls. Stephen could send him the bill.

The route FRIDAY mapped out on the HUD brought him to a floor–length curtain hidden from easy discovery by a set of bookcases. Behind it lay a curved corridor. The doors on either side were secured with heavy padlocks, and the floor was sloping, leading _down_ instead of up or on. As he neared the bend in the corridor, FRIDAY parked a line graph on the HUD. The current sensor read–out surpassed all previous ones by more than twenty percent. “Rift ahead.”

Tony saw the rift and the man he was looking for the moment he rounded the bend. The corridor opened into a cavernous hall, much larger than the Sanctum should be able to fit inside its load–bearing walls. Large pillars held up a vaulted ceiling far above his head, shrouded in darkness. Small symbols had been etched into the rough–hewn stone floor: spirals, circles, caveman pictograms, letters and runes FRIDAY identified as belonging to alphabets from all over the planet, some from languages no longer spoken by anyone alive. The rift reached from the floor all the way up to the ceiling, a fog–fringed, uneven tear in the fabric of space. Tony felt his heart miss a beat. At the centre of the rift was a hole, black and perfectly round – oddly _alive_ –looking –

The hole blinked, a milky, wet membrane sliding over it, bottom to top, quicksilver–fast.

It was an eye.

It was _just_ the eye of a large creature peering through the ragged gateway between worlds.

Tony fired up his repulsors, the unibeam, and the detachable laser array. “Don’t,” Stephen called. He stood on a raised stone dais in the centre of the hall, arms stretched wide open as if he was greeting a long-lost friend hello. “Don’t shoot. I told you, they’re not dangerous.”

Tony heard and didn’t hear him, the words lost in transition from mouth to ear, static, meaningless noise. He was transfixed by the eye. It was set into deep folds of pitted, vein–marbled, grey flesh, crusted with yellowish rheum. It turned in its socket, blinked again – looked at him, a gaze searing him to the marrow of his bones. He sensed an ancient predator’s instinct, curiosity. Hunger. The lizard part of his brain gibbered. He was rooted to the spot, caught between flight and fight, staring with fascinated horror. Twenty by twenty feet, FRIDAY measured, and that was _just the creature’s eye_ and all that was holding it back from Earth was –

Green light spilled from Stephen’s chest. The terrible gaze shifted away from Tony. The glow reflecting off its oil–slick surface catapulted him past petrified shock into incandescent fury; his brain came back online with a rush. Stephen had opened the pendant, revealing the Time Stone; this was a Nihaudri, one of the big ones, only it looked more like a squid than a jellyfish, but what else could it be; Stephen was out of his mind, off his rocker, _insane_. Tony found his voice. “Put that thing away!”

“Try pinning a note to the next one, isn’t that what you said?” Stephen bared his teeth in a grimace of strain. “Just let me work. I’m almost done.”

He was done now. Right now. Tony aimed at the eye. “Put the Time Stone away or I’ll –”

A thundering groan reverberated through the hall. Acres of grey, scoured flesh rolled past the rift, followed by miles of slender tentacles as the Nihaudri drifted off, giving way to a brief glimpse of its world, clusters of stars and dark clouds in an endless, pastel pink expanse. The rift collapsed, folding itself up from the outside inwards, growing smaller and smaller until it was only a pinprick of grey light.

Stephen dropped his arms. The gold pendant on his chest closed with a whirr of metal, shutting off the Time Stone’s acid glow. “I told you I was almost done.” Swaying, he listed to one side. “Oh...” And fell, his knees hitting the dais, followed by the rest of him. His cry of pain as he attempted to break his fall cut off abruptly as he rolled onto his side and curled up, cradling his hands to his chest.

“You’re insane.” The Mark L’s sensors reported quickly stabilizing levels both in energy output and foreign matter density in the immediate vicinity, but it wasn’t until FRIDAY gave him the all clear that he powered down his weapons. “Do you hear me? _Insane_.”

Inelegantly, Stephen robbed around on the dais, rolling himself onto his back. He lifted his head and squinted at Tony. “Are you still here?”

“Fuck you.” It came out flat and tired, lacking bite. Tony was shaking, his heart still doing a drum roll against his ribcage. “Which part of ‘pin a note to the next one’ did you interpret as ‘summon Cthulhu’?” Stephen’s glare was suspiciously red–rimmed. Tony wasn’t sure if he felt a twinge of sympathy or pure sadistic satisfaction; he was leaning toward the latter. “Mission accomplished? Papa blob is going to tell all the little blobs that the Time Stone isn’t edible and to stay away from Earth? No more blob pancakes?”

“We shall see. Thank you for the inspiration.”

“Fuck you,” Tony repeated. “Next time, try pen and paper.”

FRIDAY was having a field day comparing the previous rifts to this last one, measuring molecule arrangements and attempting to carbon–date the trace elements of _other_ left in the air, pointing out that the only terrestrial jellyfish to feature actual eyes were box jellyfish. Tony didn’t care. The thing was gone, that was all that mattered. Hopefully, it would stay gone.

He removed the helmet. The air smelled of ozone and brine. He trudged across the hall and sat down heavily on the edge of the dais to catch his breath.

Something was missing from the scene. “Where’s your cloth constrictor?”

“Upstairs.”

“Wong?”

“Kamar–Taj. Are we done playing twenty questions?”

“Haven’t even started.”

“Stark –”

The put–upon tone of voice was the last straw. “What happened to _Tony_ , huh?” The abrasive attitude, the undeserved hostility, it was all getting a bit too...

Methodical. Planned.

The penny dropped. “You’re doing this on purpose. Being an ass. You’ve been keeping me at arm’s length since we met at the park.”

Stephen’s face was a mask of concentration as he alternately stretched out and curled his reddened fingers, but there was an air of careful wariness to him now. “You’re imagining things.”

“No,” Tony said thoughtfully, “I don’t think I am.”

Titan, where Stephen had so successfully faded into the background that hearing him speak had given everyone a start; aboard the _Benatar_ , where he sequestered himself in the back of the spaceship under the pretence of needing to meditate. He hadn’t been meditating when Tony found him. He’d been standing at one of the large bay windows, his back turned to the stars, _again_ looking utterly unsurprised when Tony burst into the room. Like he’d known it was coming. Like he’d been waiting for it.

Tony put two and two together and drew a few conclusions. “What did you see in the other futures?”

Stephen dug his thumb into the centre of his palm. “Thanos’ victories. Our defeats.”

“What else?”

“I just told you –”

“What. Else.” More thumb–digging. “Stephen.”

Stephen let out slow breath, a shuddering exhale that sounded like it came from the bottom of his soul. His hands dropped to his chest, fingers loosely linked. “You are unstoppable once you’ve set your sights on a goal.” It was not a compliment. So many implications. Tony bit back the hundreds of questions that immediately sprang up. “This, now, is the only timeline where Thanos was defeated, the Gauntlet destroyed, and all the Infinity Stones scattered. It is the only timeline that ended with all who were involved reasonably content with the outcome, the only one where none of us attempted or were tempted to use the combined power of the stones, on Earth or elsewhere. Our happy ending.”

Eyes fixed on the ceiling, Stephen lapsed into a brief silence. “Or so I thought. For a while.”

So, _so_ many implications. “What went wrong?”

Stephen uttered a short, joyless bark of laughter. “You. You’re supposed to be married to Miss Potts by now.”

If it hadn’t been for a certain someone’s post–Titan antics, Tony _would_ be married, or so he’d told himself, a comforting lie to soften the blow of Pepper giving back her engagement ring, until the truth could no longer be denied, until Pepper screamed it in his face, not with her voice but with her silence as she divided up hers and his, as she packed her suitcases and called the moving company, as she walked out of his life and all the way to the other side of the continent.

He put the old hurts on the back burner. “We fucked up in those other futures. I fucked up. After Thanos.” Tony licked his lips. “I was _tempted_. I killed you. How often?”

“I stopped counting,” Stephen said.

There weren’t many temptations that would drive Tony to risk messing with the Infinity Stones. Was it Pepper or Peter he had tried to wrest from the clutches of death as he climbed over the sorcerer’s corpse to get that vital piece of the Gauntlet? Was it Rhodey?

Only a few of the piercings were visible, on Stephen’s brow, on his wrists, gleaming dully. Tony was suddenly itching to touch them. He restricted himself to pointing. “You got those... _things_ four months after we returned from Titan.” That was when the press had gotten wind of the breakup and made it public knowledge. “As protection. Against _me_. You thought I was going to steal the Time Stone, cast the universe into chaos –”

“Rewind time to have another chance,” Stephen interrupted quietly. “With her. It happened before.” His gaze turned inward. “And it always ended in catastrophe.”

Tony poked and prodded the mental image of that broken other self; he could not wrap his mind around it. Rewind time, rewind _Pepper_? No, that wasn’t him. He would never –

He had. In other futures, he had. “Just me?”

A tired smile played over Stephen’s lips. “Thor and Peter Quill are also very good at killing me.”

“That’s why you insisted we go to Vormir and –”

“Yes.”

He’s going to play god, Steve had said. The truth was, Stephen had played god to keep _them_ from playing god. That level of planning was something else. Tony’s sole focus had been on getting Peter back and putting the universe to rights. Gamora and the Asgardians had been an unexpected bonus. “Pepper and I hadn’t even set a date for the wedding yet when we broke up. Just how far into the future did you look?”

“A year.”

“Why that far?”

“Because I didn’t know you or the others. And frankly, when we met, I wasn’t overly thrilled by what I saw.”

“That feeling was mutual, believe me.”

“My point is, I didn’t know what you were going to do. Once the Guardians got involved, I was even less certain how events would unfold. I did know one thing: even if we beat Thanos, we’d still have to deal with the Infinity Stones. Call me cynical, but faith in others...” Stephen slowly stretched his fingers, one after the other, frowning at the ceiling. “Not exactly my strongest suit. And I was right, it wasn’t just about beating Thanos. We managed that in more than half of the futures I saw. It was the days and weeks _after_ that turned out to be the most pivotal, and not the big fight, ironically.”

Tony was unsure if he should be congratulating himself for having gotten Stephen to finally spill the beans, or if he should crawl into a corner and scream for a while. Like a dog with a juicy bone, his mind gnawed at the thought of millions of Tony Starks gone off the deep end – far off the deep end, took a running start and jumped off the deep end. No wonder the sorcerer was such a prickly, antagonistic ball of nerves; that first meeting in North Bergen must have brought back a ton of ugly memories.

“Well,” Tony said at length, “if you’re worried about me going after the Time Stone, that’s not going to happen. Pinky swear. So...”

Stephen clasped a hand over his wrist, hiding the line of piercings there. “Not a chance.”

“Why? Why keep them? I don’t want the stone.There’s no threat here.” Tony’s suspicion levels were rising. “Or is there?”

“It does not concern you.”

“Is it Pepper? Or Peter? FRI, check –”

FRIDAY checked. “Peter and Pepper are in no danger I can detect, boss.”

Stephen sat up, wincing as his spine popped. “It has nothing to do with any of your friends or Miss Potts.” Tony looked at him, hard, looked for the lie. “Believe me or don’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about you.”

“All right,” Tony reluctantly relented. “Tell me anyway? Maybe I can help.”

“No.” Flat, and final. Stephen climbed to his feet. “I don’t owe you any answers, Stark.”

“Now you’re just being petty.” Tony stood as well. “Tell me, in any of those other futures...were we ever friends?”

“No.”

“Not even once?”

“ _No_.”

“We totally should be.”

Stephen lost control of his face. Slack–mouthed surprise really wasn’t a good look on him. “What?”

“Carol’s gone back to roaming the universe, Cap’s pretending the United Nations aren’t watching everything he does through a magnifying glass, all the way over in Wakanda with his defrosted bestie and the rest of that merry troupe, and Thor is,” Tony flung one arm out, randomly waving at the ceiling, “all the way over there. Somewhere. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning. And I don’t want to dis your buddy Wong, but he wasn’t _there_. That leaves you and me. Perfectly good friendship material. Oh, and look!” He made a show of patting the various laser ports down the length of his suit. “Things that make other things go boom. For whatever is coming that doesn’t concern me. Hint, hint.”

“You have Peter,” Stephen began. “He –”

“Wasn’t there, either.”

“Neither was I.”

“That’s a lie,” Tony pointed out. “Maybe you fast–forwarded through it all, but you _know_. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

Stephen shoved a hand at him, fingers bent to claws.

FRIDAY blurted a warning, a second too late. Glass shattered, the sound clear as bells. The hall fractured into shards, collapsed into a kaleidoscope vortex with Tony at the centre, sucked down, down, down. The ground under his feet disappeared. He fell.

It was a short fall, ending in a short impact. Somewhere else.

Tony stared up at a dark sky dotted with faint stars. Familiar windows set in a familiar structure were spilling warm light over him. He was lying spread–eagled on the tarmac of the helicopter landing pad on the 81st floor of the Stark Tower, guts swirling with seasickness. One of the stars above him, brighter than the others, winked out of existence, leaving a fizzle of tiny sparks.

Those teleportation spells were going to be the bane of his existence.

“I am sorry, boss,” FRIDAY apologized. “I was watching him, but that spell doesn’t appear to have any visual cues. The power built–up was instantaneous.”

It had been a comparatively gentle landing, only knocking the wind out of him a little. “It’s okay, FRI.” Tony had gotten worse bruises sparring with Peter; his pride had taken the hardest hit. Tossed about like a leaf in a storm, like he wasn’t Iron Man, just a nuisance Stephen had flicked away. That last bit there, about the Year That Never Would Be, had hit a nerve. Project: Strange was off to a potholed start, and naturally, because nothing in Tony’s life was ever easy, it came with complications.

‘It’. What was ‘it’?

Sorcerer business, it had to be. Tony stared at the star–painted sky, but no epiphanies were forthcoming. It could wait. He needed time to process, to plan. To calm down.

He was standing under the hot spray of a long, luxurious shower, letting the massage setting drum the knots out of his shoulders, when FRIDAY said, “Incoming portal.”

“Inside the tower?”

“Outside. The landing pad.”

Tony stepped out of the shower, grabbing the first clothes that came to hand. “Tell him to stay there.”

“Done. I’ve also told the tower guards to stand down.”

In addition to the already existing fingerprint–locked doors and retina–scanner activated elevators, the Stark Tower now ran on a refined physical security system combining a guard force of A.I. suit–drones, capable of operating on their own reconnaissance if not directed otherwise or controlled remotely, and tried–and–true measures: laser barriers, sleep gas, sound blasts, FRIDAY, the usual.

None of which would keep out a man capable of teleporting others, and subsequently himself, all over the place. Tony had never even considered sorcerer–proofing his home. Right now, he wasn’t too keen on finding Stephen anywhere inside the tower.

He needn’t have worried. Stephen was floating ten inches above the railing marking the edge of the landing pad, shrouded in his cloak, and it hit Tony: he knew about the tower guards. Had probably died to the tower guards, the traps, in some other future, and was now embarking on the least invasive invasion, just close enough to announce his presence, far enough away to guarantee an immediate getaway if he needed it.

How nice of him. Tony was angrier than he’d thought. He stopped on the threshold of the glass doors. “If it’s not an apology, I don’t want to hear it.”

Stephen’s voice barely carried across the distance. “I should not have done that. I got...carried away. I am sorry.” The words came out stilted, wooden. Contrition sat on his face like the square peg in a round hole. Just another entry on the list of things they had in common: Tony hated apologizing.

Tony wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet. “You have no right to just teleport me away if I say something you don’t want to hear. That’s not how this works.”

Stephen looked puzzled. “How what works?”

“Friendship, you ass.”

“Stark –”

“ _Tony_ ,” Tony snapped. “Look me in the eyes and _say it_. You can do that, at least. C’mon. It’s not hard. T–o–n–y. Tony.”

“Karl Mordo.”

Brought up short, Tony tried to file the name. “Who?”

“Karl Mordo,” Stephen repeated. “You wanted to know why I’m keeping the Lines. Good night, _Tony_.”

The cloak lost its grip on gravity. With a quiet rush of air, the sorcerer plunged out of sight.

– – –

New York under siege, the giant Q–shaped ship and its sonorous engines hovering, Rhodey falling from the sky, Pepper falling into the fire, Peter falling to dust. The dull crack of his sternum under the hard edge of a shield wielded by a man who had once been his friend – had he? Had they been friends? Tony woke, the question fading to a stale echo. Pale morning light filtered through the cracks between the blinds, painting the lounge in grey stripes.

A dream. Just a dream. Nothing new.

“Good morning, boss.” FRIDAY, bedroom voice, concerned.

The scars on his chest twinged. Tony willed the organ beneath to slow, to calm. “Time?”

“Eight AM.”

He grabbed his phone with clammy, shaking fingers. No missed calls or messages. His shirt was sticking to his chest and back, soaked with sweat. Tony yanked it off and tossed it to the floor, shivering as cool air hit his moist skin. His spine cracked and popped as he straightened up from his hunch over the bar. “Raise the blinds.” Outside, the world was rain–blurry and overcast, on the cusp between dark and light. Eight AM. Three hours of sleep. He’d meant to rest his tired eyes for a bit while FRIDAY was sifting through the last of the electronic records.

The barkeep robot, finally advanced from a useless heap of parts on a work table to something marginally useful, beeped a question, standing at attention near the coffee maker behind the bar. Tony waved it away. The last cup had given him reflux. “Did the search turn up anything?”

“Nothing you didn’t already know.”

FRIDAY had found nothing substantial for the name Karl Mordo, only a 1977 birth certificate from a small Midwestern hospital in Michigan and a handful of archived school report cards describing a student with moderate success in the field of academia but a promising number of winnings on the wrestling mats. He didn’t own property, didn’t appear to have ever been issued a driver’s license; there were no employment records, credit cards, or a bank account. The trail of his parents, Wilma and John, and his sister Jaina, went cold in the late 80’s, in Birmingham, Alabama. According to a newspaper blurb from an online archive, the entire Mordo family had died when their house burned down. Racism was suspected. There was no mention of the surviving son, nor any follow–up as to who had started the fire.

Listlessly, Tony scrolled through the meagre search results. With this little to go on, he couldn’t even be certain this Mordo was the one he was looking for, or if he was chasing down someone who had died thirty years ago. Was Mordo a sorcerer? If he had travelled to Tibet, he’d left no traces for FRIDAY to find. No one with that name had crossed Tibet’s borders, at least not officially, and there was nothing on file about a Karl Mordo entering the United States in the last twenty years, either.

“Wellness check,” Tony ordered. FRIDAY delivered. Rhodey: McDonald’s with his nieces and his sister, Brooklyn Heights, safe and _yuck_ , EggMcMuffin; Pepper: board meeting, Los Angeles, safe and sound, looking bored out of her mind, Harold Hogan at her side, ever watchful; Peter: on a train with Ned and MJ, all asleep as they travelled across Germany, headed for Nuremberg.

And last, Stephen: Sanctum Sanctorum, Greenwich Village, current activity unknown. Wong still hadn’t returned from Kamar–Taj. It had been six days.

FRIDAY had finally managed to isolate a Wi–Fi connection originating from a valley tucked between the craggy mountains of the Himalayas and found satellite imagery of the coordinates, but the location was perpetually shrouded by a thick cover of clouds. Not even a repositioned Stark satellite could get through it. Magic? Or freak natural occurrence? The people who lived there shared no telephone or electrical lines with any of the nearby villages, and ‘nearby’ was a generous classification of the distances involved, the next settlement almost a hundred miles to the south.

The only positive development was the drop in rift activity, down from a median ten per night to one in three days, and that one had been a mere blip on the radar. Tony hadn’t attempted to cross Stephen’s path again. He’d needed time to process, time to figure out if the potential pay–off of dealing with the splenetic sorcerer was worth the hassle. All signs were pointing to ‘no’. The boon Stephen had thrown him hadn’t gotten him anywhere, had only generated more questions. On a scale of zero to Thanos, where did this Karl Mordo fall that Stephen was so worried about him?

Tony was foraging for breakfast when FRIDAY announced, “Doctor Strange just ported to the Jamaica Bay.”

“And?”

“This is the first time he’s done this during the day. The energy output at his location isn’t as impressive as the rift in the Sanctum, but...” She trailed off suggestively. Gently, Tony knocked his head against the fridge. “You did tell me to include him in the wellness checks, boss,” she pointed out. “I assumed you’d want to know if he does something out of the ordinary.”

The truth was: she was right. He did want to know. The aggravating sorcerer had gotten under his skin, despite or maybe _because_ he kept playing hard to get. Tony wasn’t used to having to chase others unless he meant to introduce them to the privatized side of justice. People usually came to him: for money, for his technical know–how, his material resources, for a chance to soak up the limelight as they trailed in his shadow.

Had. Had come to him.

He suited up.

It was raining again, thick, heavy drops mixed with sleet. FRIDAY directed him to a small island east of Floyd Bennett Field. “Cameras,” Tony said absent–mindedly. “Keep an eye out for the coast guard and tourists.” Far below him on the shore, Stephen stood in the water, unruly waves cresting white and churning around his ankles, the cloak water–logged and stiff, ignoring the sharp wind whipping through the marsh. As Tony prepared to land, he raised his hands, palms out toward the ocean, his movements slow, meditative. If he was planning to greet the sun, he was facing the wrong –

Light snaked down Stephen’s wrists and forearms, blindingly white, as he moved his hands apart. The ocean parted for him like the Red Sea had for Moses, booming with the voice of a million tons of water. FRIDAY produced the electronic equivalent of _what the fuck_ and trailed off into question marks _._ A trench was opening, revealing the drop where the island ended and the water began, steep and alive with wriggling sea creatures.

FRIDAY recovered. “There.” The HUD zoomed in on a black squiggle at the bottom of the trench, squirming a few inches above the sea ground. Tony barely saw it, focused on the man who was, one slow, measured step at a time, entering the trench.

He landed, gravel and muck spraying everywhere. “Are you nuts? Making nice with papa blob wasn’t enough? Get back here!” Stephen either didn’t hear his shout or was ignoring him as he descended deeper into the trench. The soft, wet ground gave worryingly under the weight of the Mark L. Tony took to the air again. “I want immediate take–off on my mark. Full thrusters.”

“Boss, let me remind you of Wong’s warning not to –”

“I don’t care!”

“Also, Doctor Strange is going to suffer significant damage to his muscles, ligaments and skeletal structure if he is subjected to that kind of sudden acceleration.”

14.6 pounds of pressure per square inch of the human body’s surface at sea level, plus an additional 14.6 pounds per ten metres of depth, _plus_ the explosive kinetic energy that would be released when the water rushed back in. The deepest point of the trench was at 34.8 feet below sea level. If the sorcerer didn’t get out of there in time, the ocean was going to pulverize him.

“Better than dead,” Tony snarled. “Be ready.”

Stephen was building a net of living light around the squiggly thing, ghostly trails of energy weaving together, shedding sparks where they crossed. The squiggle fought back, the world’s first rabid ink stain, rapidly changing shape and size, lashing out with elastic feelers tipped with more feelers, squirmed, shrinking, the bands of light wrapping around it, smaller, tighter, nothing, gone.

The walls of water rumbled ominously, bulging and tilting. Stephen swayed where he stood. The cloak began to lift him. Slow. Too slow.

Tony flew up to the pair from behind, clamped his arms around sorcerer and cloak, and pulled them up. Stephen uttered a shout of surprise, lost in the roar of the water, rammed his elbow back, hard enough to warrant an impact warning on the HUD, and followed up with – Tony had never been so glad to be wearing armour, or hoping so hard no one was watching him. Awkwardly, heading skywards, he clenched his knees together, trapping Stephen’s foot before he could slam his heel up into the goods a second time. “What’d they teach you at Hogwarts, Castration 101?”

Stephen craned his head around. Wide–eyed recognition replaced dull rage. “Wha –”

“Rescuing you, sunshine. Hold still.”

One careful booster thrust later, they were a safe twenty feet above sea level, and not a moment too soon: the trench collapsed in a giant explosion of spume that sprayed up high enough to splatter against the soles of their boots.

Tony steered them higher, out of reach. “What was that?”

“Chaos dimension,” Stephen gasped out. “A tear.”

“Different from a rift, how?”

“Rifts are intentional. Made. Tears are naturally occurring. Where the borders are –” Another gasp. “Thin. Could you –?”

“Whoops.” Tony loosened his grip. “And you’re welcome.” Stephen didn’t reply to the pointed hint, sagging as he took in a great whoop of breath, but the cloak wiggled a corner free and patted Tony on the head. “...you’re welcome, too, I suppose. Hey, doc.” He jiggled his armful, not liking the silence and the sudden dead weight. “Please don’t faint. That would be so embarrassing.”

Stephen scraped wet hair out of his eyes, his movements slow and sluggish. He looked like something the cat had dragged in after an enthusiastic mauling in the middle of a thunderstorm, wet and bedraggled and exhausted, rain dripping off the tip of his nose. “Tony –”

“Mark the calendar, FRI,” Tony drawled, “he said my name.”

FRIDAY showed him the results of a health scan taken on the sly, instead. Elevated adrenaline levels, heart palpitations, no surprise there, stress, narrowly escaping being crushed to paste, getting all close and personal with the man who’d killed him a few million times. Low core temperature – dangerously low, 35.5 Celsius. Flirting with hypothermia. And his weight, _god_. Half a head taller, twenty pounds less, and it wasn’t like Tony was bulky.

“Time to skip this joint.” Tony considered their options. “Portal, or the scenic route?”

“Portal,” came the faint reply.

The ring of sparks came out as a wobbly oval rather than the usual perfect circle. Tony eyed it with trepidation, vividly remembering how the Maw’s sidekick had lost his hand to a portal, and quickly shoved them through. For once, the Sanctum’s foyer was brightly lit, welcoming. He landed. “I take it Wong still isn’t back.” Stephen staggered a few steps away, shrugging off the sodden cloak. “Sit down before you fall down.”

The cloak twirled itself into a noodle, wringing half a gallon of water onto the floor. It spread out and ordered its folds, shook off the last drops from its hem, and floated away in the direction of the kitchen. Stephen waved a tired hand. The puddle on the floor disappeared. He waved his hand again and in the next second was dressed in sweatpants and a threadbare t–shirt, the dripping tunic, pants, and boots gone. He sat on the first step of the grand staircase, stretching his long legs out with a groan.

Tony peeled back the suit. “Should you be doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Magic tricks. You’re dead on your feet already.”

Something bumped into the backs of his knees. He expected it to be the cloak, but it was an easy chair, one of those eared leather monstrosities. Stephen made an inviting gesture, smiling sardonically. “You’re not looking so fresh yourself. Trouble sleeping, I assume. Have a seat.”

Tony ignored the comment and sat. “Why don’t you call in backup? You can’t be the only sorcerer on Earth capable of closing rifts. Or tears.”

Stephen’s smile faded. “I’m not. But you overestimate our numbers.”

“Ah,” Tony said, “so it’s a lack of manpower. You’re not just being...” Stephen cocked his head, inquisitive. “Suicidally stupid?”

He expected an explosive reply, but Stephen only ran both hands through his wet hair, sighing. “Kindly explain how you arrived at that conclusion.”

It had been bugging Tony for a while now, but today’s events had really driven it home. “The moment you learned Thanos was coming, you came to me. Maybe Bruce told you to, but I think you would’ve come to me even if he hadn’t, why? Because even before you looked into the future, you wanted all the firepower you could get to help protect the Time Stone. Logical, tactically sound, a hundred points to Slytherin.” Tony paused. “How am I doing so far?”

Stephen’s chin dipped a fraction of an inch. “Go on.”

“You’ve been running yourself ragged for three years now. Why not ask your sorcerer buddies for help?”

“Because I don’t want their help.”

“Why not? Pride? You’re not that shallow.”

Stephen whimpered, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Vishanti save me. Why do you have to be so...”

“Obstinate?” Tony suggested.

“Yes!”

“Well, doc, you said it yourself. Unstoppable once I’ve set my eyes on a goal.”

The look Stephen gave him was half despair, half amusement. They were on the precipice of something here, Tony sensed it. He let the silence work for him, as it had before.

The cloak returned from the kitchen, bearing two steaming mugs in bunched–up folds that could, with some imagination, pass for rudimentary hands. Tony’s nostrils twitched. _Coffee_. Wong had been holding out on him. Eagerly, he accepted the mug the cloak held out to him and took a sip. _Decaf_. Thank god Wong had been holding out on him. He took another sip; even bad coffee was better than no coffee.

Stephen had cupped his hands around his mug, keeping it afloat between his palms. He stared at a spot on the floor between them, a fold between his brows. “The others don’t know about the Lines,” he said at last. “I want to keep it that way. I don’t like to make other people clean up my messes.”

He lifted his gaze to Tony. His eyes were a very pale grey today; sectoral heterochromia, Tony had looked it up. “In 2016, the Earth came under attack by an inter–dimensional entity known as Dormammu, a primordial creature that plans to conquer the Multiverse, the collective of all parallel dimensions in existence. It had allies here on Earth, former Masters of the Mystic Arts, zealots. Dormammu promised them immortality in return for entrance into our dimension. Little did they suspect that the eternal life they were offered was really only eternal servitude as Dormammu’s mindless slaves, but that’s really neither here nor there, I suppose.”

The mug hung near Tony’s mouth, forgotten. 2016 had been a year of relative peace for him. He’d been recovering from the arc reactor removal surgery, working on rebuilding the lung capacity the surgeons had told him he’d never regain. Between long holidays with Pepper and keeping an eye on Peter’s ongoing adventures as the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman, he must have missed the news about _this_ end of the world.

“Unfortunately,” Stephen continued, “the Ancient One, the head of our order, died during one of the battles. Even more unfortunate, it was revealed that she had been drawing power from the Dark Dimension, Dormammu’s domain, to extend the span of her life. She only meant to do good. She _did_ do good, for centuries. But her right–hand man didn’t take it so well that the person he’d been looking up to for nearly two decades had been violating the natural order right under his nose. The Dark Dimension is a big,” he wagged a mocking finger, “no–no for us. Now, guess that right–hand man’s name.”

Only one name that would make sense in the context came to mind. “Karl Mordo.”

Stephen nodded. “We eventually managed to defeat Dormammu and his zealots, Wong, Karl, and me, but not before Wong died, the Hong Kong Sanctum was destroyed, and a substantial part of the city laid to ruin. I was just a novice in the art at that time, barely capable of casting a steady portal. But I was very, very good at using _this_.” He flicked the pendant around his neck. “And very good at ignoring rules. So I did what I thought was the right thing to do.”

 _I know what the Time Stone can do, I have personally experienced its powers._ “You brought back Wong. Turned back time on Hong Kong. I’m guessing Mordo didn’t take any of that too well, either.”

“You could say that. He’s been going around stripping sorcerers of their power since that day, claiming we’re all violating the natural order.”

“Just stripping them off their powers?”

“Killing, in some cases.” Stephen took a slow, careful sip, watching him over the rim of his mug. “You don’t believe me.”

It all sounded _utterly_ unbelievable. Century–old sorcerers? Hong Kong in ruins? That alone would have made world news in a hot second. “I’m keeping tabs on everything that happens on this beautiful planet of ours. How come I’m only hearing about this now?”

“Because we don’t fight our battles out in the open. If we did, large parts of the world would be apocalyptic wastelands,” Stephen said dryly. “And there are some things the general populace is better off not knowing. How do you think the average person would take it if they learned that on any given day, the stuff that holds the universe together just _breaks_ and allows visitors to slip in?”

Tony thought of a giant eye staring at him through a rift and hissed; the mug had tipped too much and spilled hot coffee over his fingers. He put it on the floor and nursed the stinging digits, mulling over the question. The average New Yorker might react with aplomb simply because for the last ten plus years, extraordinary events and individuals had been part of their daily routine. But the rest of the world had just started getting used to the idea of Mutants, Heroes, alien invasions, and the swampy underbelly that was revealed when you turned over the spandex–clad and super–powered, ripe with political agendas, personal vendettas, and criminal energy.

“Point taken,” he conceded reluctantly. “Is that why you guys operate under everyone’s radar?”

“Yes,” Stephen said, “and because of the witch hunts. Hard to protect reality while being burned alive at some stake. We learned our lesson.”

Tony’s understanding of certain parts of world history as agreed upon by today’s leading scholars took a sharp step sideways. Speculative, thinking of the ocean parting on command, he asked, “Can you turn water into wine? Feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish?”

Stephen smirked lopsidedly. “There is an entire section in the library at Kamar–Taj dedicated to the subject of world religions and magic. Interesting reading material, particularly if you’re of a more...doubting nature.”

“ _Hah_ ,” Tony breathed, “I _knew_ it.” His exaltation didn’t last in the face of the info bomb Stephen had unloaded on him. “Mordo...how good is he?”

“Very good.”

“Better than you?”

Stephen weighed his answer. “More experienced.”

“And he’s coming for you.”

“And when he does, I’d prefer it if no other targets were around, which is why I’m keeping my colleagues as far away from here as possible, which is why I’m not going to ask them for help, which is why I’m keeping the Lines.” Stephen let out a weary breath. “There. The whole story. That’s it. Nothing more to tell.”

Layers upon layers, intricately linked – Tony’s entire acquaintance with the sorcerer, starting on day one, had been one giant obfuscation aimed at keeping him in the dark.

Even now, he had so many questions. Did Stephen know when Mordo was coming? Did he know where Mordo was currently? What exactly was the plan here – sit around and wait for the confrontation to happen, trusting the protection spell to do its job? Was he aware that whittling himself down to nothing while he waited was only going to make things easier for Mordo? Had they planned anything to keep Wong safe? How _did_ one strip sorcerers of their powers?

Tony started with the one question at the front of his mind. “Why tell me now?”

Stephen studied his toes. “When Mordo comes, you have stay out of it. This is beyond you. This,” he extended a finger, calling forth a tiny, blue flame that flickered merrily, “isn’t something you can shoot.”

Tony snorted. “I can just shoot Mordo.”

Stephen closed his fist around the dancing flame, snuffing it out. “He’s my responsibility.” He glanced at Tony, looked away. “You’ve done enough. Suffered enough.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Tony said, oddly touched. “It’s a bit weird, you suddenly trying to protect me, after that year...”

“You think I enjoyed putting you through that?”

“Not saying you enjoyed it. Just that you did it.”

“And would again, if I had to.”

“That’s comforting to know,” Tony said, flat. “Thanks.”

Stephen slumped. “I told you, if there had been any other way –”

Tony waved his hands, _okay, okay_. So he wasn’t over that; no big surprise. He didn’t think he ever would be over it.

They sat in silence. Tony finished his coffee. Eventually, seriously droopy–eyed, Stephen slowly rose to his feet. “I need to rest.”

“You do look like death warmed over,” Tony agreed, rising as well. “Hey, are you free, say, tomorrow night?”

“For?”

“Dinner. That’s why I came to the Sanctum last week, by the way. I was thinking pizza.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. This whole,” Stephen’s index fingers hooked in the air, “friendship thing.”

“Look, I’m not asking you to open a vein and swear a blood bond,” Tony said bluntly. “You’ve lost about thirty, thirty–five pounds since Titan and you nearly drowned today. You need someone to give you a reality check every once in a while. Wait, let me finish.” Stephen had stiffened, his face turned to stone. “You can storm off in a huff after I’ve said my piece. It’s a short piece, I promise.” He waited, and after what looked like an intense inner struggle – and a gentle pat from the cloak, what was that thing doing, cheerleading for Tony? – Stephen gave a short nod, arms crossed. Tony girded his loins. “It’s not just about you. Now tell me you’re capable of reading between the lines so I don’t have to do the full disclosure thing.”

For a moment, Stephen appeared startled. “The wind beneath each other’s wings?”

“You’re not a fan of cheesy 80’s pop songs, are you? Because that’s a deal breaker. What kind of music do you listen to, anyway?”

“Tibetan throat chanting.”

“Really?”

“ _No_.”

Tony grinned; he knew he almost had him. “C’mon, doc. We live in the same city. Might as well make the most of it and team up. All in favour of the motion raise their hands.” He lifted his hand. The cloak followed suit, two knot–’hands’ going up in the air. “See? You cloth constrictor agrees with me.”

Stephen hung his head. “This is going to be a mess.”

“Don’t knock it till you tried it. So, dinner?” Tony wiggled his brows. “Just say yes, doc.”

“Fine,” Stephen said, “ _yes_.”

– – –

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took an age, why? Because it was hot and my brain was melting, because once I started to rearrange the one or two things I meant to rearrange I suddenly wanted to rearrange like 34940569596 other things, because it was hot, and did I mention it was hot?
> 
> Obvious Terry Pratchett reference in this chapter is obvious.
> 
> Toodles!


End file.
